"One Art" by Elizabeth Bishop

I watch the film "In Her Shoes" at the weekend on television, it was certainly better than most films of its type. The film featured a couple of poems prominently. One of the poems was "One Art" by Elizabeth Bishop which I had not come across before. I am always heartened when poetry is used to good effect in movies because, at its best, no other medium seems to bring poetry so richly to life.
This poem is very interesting because it portrays the authors inner struggle with her emotions. On the one hand she wants to convince the reader that losing is an art that you can master. She outlines a strategy whereby you start by losing something insignificant like keys and gradually your tolerance grows so that you can afford to lose something as large as a continent. The last stanza gives her true feelings away. Losing a friend that you love is not an art you can master, it always hurts. You can imagine the poet stabbing her pen in to the table as she writes the last disaster.
This is a very fine poem and reminds me once again how little I have discovered of that great continent that is American poetry.

One Art

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with 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 beloved 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 gesture
I 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!) a disaster