 Poetry: March 15, 2006 Issue [#929] |
  Poetry
This week: Edited by: John~Ashen  
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Poetry! It comes in all styles and meanings. Some poems express personal feelings; others demonstrate a particular pattern. Most of us write some combination in between. I'll be offering advice on different styles and pointing out techniques to improve your poems. Enjoy  --John~Ashen |
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Elizabeth Bishop
I recently watched the 2005 movie "In Her Shoes" starring Cameron Diaz and Toni Collette as clashing sisters. The following is the poem featured throughout the second half of the movie:
One Art by Elizabeth Bishop
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 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 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!) like disaster.
Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979) had a sad childhood. While she was very young, her father died and her mother was permanently sent to a sanitarium. She traveled a lot after college, her later years bringing abandonment, lesbian relationships, and suicides of friends. She was Poetry Editor for The Nation magazine and later taught poetry at Harvard.
Bishop's poems display in casual attitudes the themes of depression, estrangement, and illness. She was a perfectionist and not interested in writing longer pieces. The villanelle was one of her favorite forms. The above poem hopefully shows that they are possible to write without the repetition becoming annoying.
She was not just a lover of irony, though. She could write a soft sonnet, too :
I Am in Need of Music by Elizabeth Bishop
I am in need of music that would flow
Over my fretful, feeling fingertips,
Over my bitter-tainted, trembling lips,
With melody, deep, clear, and liquid-slow.
Oh, for the healing swaying, old and low,
Of some song sung to rest the tired dead,
A song to fall like water on my head,
And over quivering limbs, dream flushed to glow!
There is a magic made by melody:
A spell of rest, and quiet breath, and cool
Heart, that sinks through fading colors deep
To the subaqueous stillness of the sea,
And floats forever in a moon-green pool,
Held in the arms of rhythm and of sleep
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