The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.
– Even losing you (the joking voice, a gestureI
love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.
Theme
This month we’re thinking about the value in loss: particularly, we have a poem about how to let things go. This is a vital lesson for any leader, because there is always a limit to what we can control. But relinquishing control is an art in itself, whether it comes to delegation, or time-management, or prioritizing one project over another—there are good and bad ways to do all of these things, and this month we’re thinking of the best ways.
Who?
Our poem is by Elizabeth Bishop (1911 – 1979), and American poet and short-story writer. Bishop is a big name in the U. S. and has a glittering trophy-cabinet, from the Pulitzer Prize to Neustadt International Prize for Literature. She knows what she’s doing.
What?
You might notice in her poem above, words – and even whole lines – are repeated. This is because the poem is a ‘villanelle’. All villanelles have a total of 19 lines, and contain two refrains and two recurring rhymes. In ‘One Art’, everything either rhymes with ‘master’ or ‘spent’. This makes it a useful poetic form for thinking hard about a single topic, because you end up dwelling on the same sets of words over and over again.
In this case, Bishop uses the poem to think about how we might learn to let go, and how we might master loss, by beginning with simple, but sentimental, possessions – ‘I lost my mother’s watch’ – before moving on to those things we could never really own in the first place, like ‘rivers’ or ‘a continent’. Being content with loss is a necessary part of life, but that doesn’t make it easy. This is reflected in the structure: villanelles are notoriously hard to write (why not try and write one yourself?), because you limit the number of different words you can use. Bishop is therefore showing us, via the poem’s form, a way to be happy with what you have.
What Else?
Bishop was part of what was called the ‘confessional’ poetry movement, which included other – predominantly American poets – like Robert Lowell and Sylvia Plath (read a Plath poem here). We must always be wary of lumping poets in together too simply, because a poem is always many things at once, but loosely-speaking the Confessionals tried to approach their subjects candidly, remarking and responding to their experiences and feelings as honestly as possible.
Honesty is important in leadership, too: we must be honest with ourselves, and with those around us, even if that means being honest about what we have to let go.
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