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, “One Art” from The Complete Poems 1926-1979. Copyright © 1979, 1983 by Alice Helen Methfessel. Reprinted with the permission of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, LLC. Source: The Complete Poems 1926-1979 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1983)
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This means that in the art of losing, to the reader it says, no matter what you do or what happens, it’s not going to be a disaster.
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In this sentence caught my eye because she was giving examples of things she has lost and then all of sudden she starts stating bigger things. Like in this sentence, how can you lose places, that i am pretty sure cannot be owned by a person nor the richest person in the world?
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