{"id":178904,"date":"2021-02-08T12:00:16","date_gmt":"2021-02-08T12:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=178904"},"modified":"2021-02-08T04:32:57","modified_gmt":"2021-02-08T04:32:57","slug":"one-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2021\/02\/one-art\/","title":{"rendered":"One Art"},"content":{"rendered":"

Alongside classics like Dylan Thomas\u2019s \u201cDo Not Go Gentle into that Good Night\u201d<\/a> and Sylvia Plath\u2019s \u201cMad Girl\u2019s Love Song,\u201d<\/a> \u201cOne Art\u201d remains one of the greatest and most influential villanelles in the English language \u2014 sculptural masterworks of creative constraint, in which the virtuosity of language meets an exquisite mathematical precision in nineteen measured lines: five three-line stanzas and a final stanza of four lines, with the first and third line of the first stanza forming a refrain of alternating repetition across the remaining stanzas and then coming together into a chorus of a couplet in the closing verse. A haiku in the higher mathematics of meter.<\/em>
\n— Maria Popova, Brain Pickings<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

************
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

The art of losing isn\u2019t hard to master;
\nso many things seem filled with the intent
\nto be lost that their loss is no disaster.<\/p>\n

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
\nof lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
\nThe art of losing isn\u2019t hard to master.<\/p>\n

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
\nplaces, and names, and where it was you meant
\nto travel. None of these will bring disaster.<\/p>\n

I lost my mother\u2019s watch. And look! my last, or
\nnext-to-last, of three loved houses went.
\nThe art of losing isn\u2019t hard to master.<\/p>\n

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
\nsome realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
\nI miss them, but it wasn\u2019t a disaster.<\/p>\n

\u2014Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
\nI love) I shan\u2019t have lied. It\u2019s evident
\nthe art of losing\u2019s not too hard to master
\nthough it may look like (Write<\/em> it!) like disaster.<\/p>\n

Bishop died not long after composing \u201cOne Art,\u201d having requested the last two lines of another poem of hers as an epitaph:<\/strong><\/p>\n

All the untidy activity continues,
\nawful but cheerful.<\/p>\n