For someone who said she does not like poetry so much, I seem to be including it here more often than I expected. This is one of my favorites. Every time I read it, not more than once a year, I find something else to learn from it.

The idea that I can survive anything is not hard to accept. I thought of myself as a survivor for a long time. But then, when I would consider a specific loss, I was convinced I could not survive it. Like losing my mother. I am not sure how the two ideas coexist but they do for me: I can survive anything and there are things which will break me.

I think Elizabeth Bishop is talking about more than survival here and I think that is why I always find this poem meaningful. She is talking about wanting to live and be happy, in the midst of loss. I still contemplate things which I am sure will break me. But then, I re-read this poem and I am reminded that I did survive.

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.