Loss isn’t a word associated with many things that are pleasant-- the only exception I can think of is a reduction of poundage from our too large human frames—and it is most associated with the loss of human life. Death is one way of losing something or someone you love and it happens all of the time, a pet, a relative, an admired celebrity or anyone we have come to know.
Living life after you’ve lost something that’s still alive can be considerably more painful to come to terms with. Maybe it’s the loss of a friend you didn’t mean to lose touch with, but it just sort of happened, or the loss of knowledge of a place you once knew by heart. It is the nature of our composition and the trajectory of human life that at some point we all lose something. Some losses are inevitable and some are surprising and sometimes losing something you love happens painfully, over time.
Whatever it is, loss hurts and I don’t think it is something I’ll ever master. Elizabeth Bishop is the author of my favorite poem on this topic—from losing keys to someone she loved the most, his short poem is magnificent. I first read it over 15 years ago and thought I got it at the time but I think it’s more special to me after experiencing loss of my own. Below is Bishop’s poem followed by my response to her poem, dedicated to her.
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.
In so many ways I wish Bishop were here to talk about what she really says here, that losing someone you love does feel like utter disaster, and how it made it onto her page. I cannot top this but I would let her read my own offering and I wonder what she would say about it if we sat down for coffee.
Your Art
(For Elizabeth Bishop)
by Nicole Speulda
A body
words to make love by
loss wrapped in a blank page
your bleeding pen revives,
A lover, lost lover
a pair of scantily clothed ideas
damp and drying on the line,
But your art endures
shadows coming and going
the presence of people
and warm fingered frames of mind.
You left us with song
plucked from the crisp wing
of his brisk departure.
A tune of grief perhaps
a sinking ship, flag half mast.
Or is loss freedom,
a nakedness removed of that part
the silent one art?
1 comment:
The loss of loved ones has been on my mind lately. My Aunt Eleonor died last week at 93. She was my mom's older sister and the last of her generation. She had been institutionalized in NYC for many years and was far into senile dementia.
But she was one of the original bohemians and lived in Greenwich Village during the late forties and fifties. She lived "in sin" with an older man, an artist. So, she was regarded as a black sheep and cut off from much of the rest of her family.
But she used to come visit us periodically. She was a musician and would be bringing castoff instruments of all sorts. Recorders, tambourines, triangles, trombones, marimbas are among those I remember.
And I've been thinking more about Keats. One of the lines in the movie is something to the effect that he would rather be a butterfly and have three days of intense happiness before dying than a long life - with the implication that his days with Fanny were intensely happy.
And, of course, Tuck plays into that, with the Tucks unaging. I think, with Jesse, that the parents take too dim a view of it. And a mere 84 years does not seem so long that one would be weary of life. But as the years went by, and those you loved disappeared, perhaps.
Then, of all things, in Parade magazine, Drew Barrymore was quoted that she doesn't believe in happy endings but instead looks for good days.
And I think that's important. The end is always the same for us, and can be at best bittersweet. But the quality of the time before that, and our capacity to enjoy and appreciate it is what matters.
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