Mark Strand / The Coming of Light

THE COMING OF LIGHT

by Mark Strand

Even this late it happens:
the coming of love, the coming of light. 
You wake and the candles are lit as if by themselves, 
stars gather, dreams pour into your pillows, 
sending up warm bouquets of air.
Even this late the bones of the body shine 
and tomorrow's dust flares into breath.

Read also
BIOGRAPHY OF MARK STRAND
Mark Strand / With Only the Stars to Guide Us
Mark Strand at John Cabot University
Mark Strand / The Art of Poetry
Mark Strand / The Everyday Enchantment of Music
Mark Strand / The Coming of Light
Mark Strand / Eating Poetry
Mark Strand / From the Long Sad Party
Mark Strand / My Mother on an Evening in Late Summer

Mark Strand / Always

Mark Strand / The Everyday Enchantment of Music

THE EVERYDAY ENCHANTMENT OF MUSIC

by Mark Strand

A rough sound was polished until it became a smoother sound, which was polished until it became music. Then the music was polished until it became the memory of a night in Venice when tears of the sea fell from the Bridge of Sighs, which in turn was polished until it ceased to be and in its place stood the empty home of a heart in trouble. Then suddenly there was sun and the music came back and traffic was moving and off in the distance, at the edge of the city, a long line of clouds appeared, and there was thunder, which, however menacing, would become music, and the memory of what happened after Venice would begin, and what happened after the home of the troubled heart broke in two would also begin.

Read also
BIOGRAPHY OF MARK STRAND
Mark Strand / With Only the Stars to Guide Us
Mark Strand at John Cabot University
Mark Strand / The Art of Poetry
Mark Strand / The Everyday Enchantment of Music
Mark Strand / The Coming of Light
Mark Strand / Eating Poetry
Mark Strand / From the Long Sad Party
Mark Strand / My Mother on an Evening in Late Summer

Mark Strand / Always

Mark Strand at John Cabot University

Damiano Abeni, Moira Egan & Mark Strand

Mark Strand at John Cabot University

On June 1st, John Cabot University welcomed Former U.S. Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Prize winner Mark Strand.  Strand led a workshop on the craft of writing poetry using the English and Italian translations of several poems by Wallace Stevens as examples.

Strand is currently serving as John Cabot University’s first Poet-in-Residence in conjunction with the JCU Summer Institute for Creative Writing and Literary Translation.  During the academic year, Strand teaches English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University in New York. His many honors include the Bollingen Prize, three grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, a National Institute of Arts and Letters Award, the 1974 Edgar Allen Poe Prize from The Academy of American Poets, and a Rockefeller Foundation award, as well as fellowships from The Academy of American Poets, the MacArthur Foundation, the Ingram Merrill Foundation.  Most recently, he has been awarded the Gold Medal in Poetry by the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a prize whose other recipients include Robert Frost, Marianne Moore, William Carlos Williams, and John Ashbery.

The following evening, June 2nd, Mark Strand gave a reading of his work to a standing-room-only crowd in the Aula Magna at John Cabot University.  Strand’s long-time translator Damiano Abeni read the translations of the poems.

Poet Mark Strand & Translator Damiano AbeniMark Strand & Damiano Abeni

Carlo Carabba, Damiano Abeni & Mark Strand

Poet Mark Strand and former student Eliza Griswold

Mark Strand

Photos courtesy of Mario Ventura

http://jcucreativewriting.wordpress.com/2010/06/07/mark-strand/

Read also
BIOGRAPHY OF MARK STRAND

Mark Strand / With Only the Stars to Guide Us

Mark Strand at John Cabot University

Mark Strand / The Art of Poetry

Mark Strand / The Everyday Enchantment of Music

Mark Strand / The Coming of Light

Mark Strand / Eating Poetry

Mark Strand / From the Long Sad Party

Mark Strand / My Mother on an Evening in Late Summer

Mark Strand / Always

The Day Carl Sandburg Died

The Day Carl Sandburg Died

New Documentary Commemorates Carl Sandburg’s Death. 

Explore the controversial life and legacy of Carl Sandburg through archival footage and interviews with Pete Seeger, the late Studs Terkel and Norman Corwin, family, poets, and scholars. The Day Carl Sandburg Died, premieres nationwide Monday, September 24 on PBS (check local listings).

For much of the 20th century, Carl Sandburg (1/6/1878 – 7/22/1967) was synonymous with the American experience, a spokesman on behalf of “the people.” One of the most successful writers in the English language, Sandburg was a three-time Pulitzer Prize-winner for his poetry (Cornhuskers, 1918 and Complete Poems, 1950) and part of his six-volume Lincoln biography (Abraham Lincoln: The War Years, 1939). He was also a groundbreaking journalist, folk song collector, children’s storyteller, political organizer/activist, novelist, autobiographer, and captivating performer. 

Yet, after his death, Sandburg’s literary legacy faded and his poems, once taught in schools across America, were dismissed under the weight of massive critical attack. The new 90-minute documentary provides a dynamic examination of Sandburg’s life, work and controversial legacy from a modern perspective.

Fans of Sandburg should not miss the chance to tour his homestead, now a historic site, while visiting Asheville.

Learn more about Asheville's Literary History

http://blog.exploreasheville.com/2012/09/the-day-carl-sandburg-died.html

Read also
BIOGRAPHY OF CARL SANDBURG

Len Steckler / Carl Sandburg and Marilyn Monroe

Carl Sandburg and Marilyn Monroe

by Len Steckler

Actress Marilyn Monroe is shown with poet Carl Sandburg in this December 1961 photo taken in New York City in this photo released to Reuters February 5, 2010. Photographer Len Steckler shot the black-and-white images of Monroe when she unexpectedly arrived at his apartment in December, 1961, to visit his friend, Pulitzer-prize winning poet Sandburg. Steckler is offering them for a sale as a limited edition series called Marilyn Monroe: The Visit.

Photographs of Marilyn Monroe appearing relaxed and lounging around a New York apartment nine months before she died were unveiled on Friday after being held in a private archive for more than 45 years.

Photographer Len Steckler shot the black-and-white images of Monroe when she unexpectedly arrived at his apartment in December, 1961, to visit his friend, Pulitzer-prize winning poet Carl Sandburg Steckler is offering them for a sale as a limited edition series called "Marilyn Monroe: The Visit."

The pictures to be sold -- four single images and two triptychs, or pictures in three parts -- show Monroe wearing pointed, thick-rimmed sunglasses and a short sleeve dress while talking and laughing with Sandburg. Also offered will be 250 prints of each piece.

"It was serendipitous with these two icons in their moment and me there with my camera," Steckler told Reuters, saying he was "like a fly on the wall" while he shot Monroe, then 35, and Sandburg, 83, while they chatted and held hands.

Steckler, a former commercial fashion and beauty photographer who is now "about 80" and lives in Los Angeles, said on the afternoon Monroe visited, Sandburg had mentioned in a casual manner that they would soon have "a visitor."

"Hours later I went to open the door and there I was face to face with Marilyn Monroe, and she looked more ravishing than on the screen," he said. "She said 'I am sorry I am late. I was at the hairdressers, matching my hair to Carl's.'"

Monroe's hair does indeed appear like Sandburg's in the pictures, almost white, said Steckler, and he added that after he took the photos, they all drank Jack Daniels whiskey.

"As we know, Marilyn loved older men, she loved the intellectuals -- and Carl was very parental with her," said Steckler. "It was a lovely thing to see."

The actress died in August, 1962, and Sandburg, who won Pulitzer prizes for his poetry and for a biography of Abraham Lincoln, died seven years later.

Steckler said he decided to sell the photos after his son discovered the negatives in a recent appraisal of his work, and Steckler thought "the current generation" needed to see them.

"I had forgotten about them," he said. "And I thought this would be a good thing to show and for them to talk about."

The pieces range in price from $1,999 to $3,999 and have never been published for public use.

They are on sale at www.thevisitseries.com and by phone with collectibles dealer Eagle National Mint, who is offering a certificate of authenticity for each print.

(Editing by Bob Tourtellotte anda Vicki Allen)

http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/gossip/marilyn-monroe-visit-photographs-carl-sandburg-len-steckler-1961-sale-article-1.198507

Read also

BIOGRAPHY OF CARL SANBURG

Carl Sandburg and Lillian Sandburg

Carl and Lillian Sandburg

Photograph by Edward Steichen

These two people were kindred spirits and shared many of the same values and dreams. Mr. Carl Sandburg and Miss Lilian Stechen were married after a six month courtship of letters. Theirs was a long marriage that ended with Sandburg’s death 59 ½ years later. Carl Sandburg wrote in a letter to his wife in 1908, "I would rather be a poem like you than write poems. I would rather embody the big things as you do than carve or paint or write them. You inspire art-& that's living!"

Paper. H 25.4, W 29.1 cm
Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site, CARL 222

http://www.nps.gov/history/museum/exhibits/carl/story/steichens/CARL222_steichenPhoto.html

Read also

BIOGRAPHY OF CARL SANBURG

Carl Sandburg / How much

HOW MUCH?

by Carl Sandburg

How much do you love me, a million bushels?  
Oh, a lot more than that, Oh, a lot more.  
   
And to-morrow maybe only half a bushel?  
To-morrow maybe not even a half a bushel.  
   
And is this your heart arithmetic? 
This is the way the wind measures the weather.

Read also

BIOGRAPHY OF CARL SANBURG

Elizabeth Bishop / Dear Elizabeth

Elizabeth Bishop 

The Art of Poetry 

THEATER REVIEW

A Stamp on the Outside, Intimacy on the Inside

‘Dear Elizabeth,’ a Sarah Ruhl Play

Joan Marcus

Mary Beth Fisher and Jefferson Mays in “Dear Elizabeth,” the Sarah Ruhl play at the Yale Repertory Theater about the friendship between the writers Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell.

By CHARLES ISHERWOOD

Published: December 10, 2012

NEW HAVEN — “I seem to spend my life missing you,” Robert Lowell wrote to Elizabeth Bishop, many years after the long and intimate friendship between these two great American poets began. In another letter he sadly observed, “We seem attached to each other by some stiff piece of wire, so that each time one moves, the other moves in another direction.”

The geographical distance between them, breached only rarely during their sometimes tumultuous lives, was a deeply felt burden to both — if perhaps occasionally a blessing, too. But it left behind a great literary treasure: more than 400 letters that they exchanged as their careers and lives blossomed, faltered, foundered, almost fell apart, then blossomed anew. The playwright Sarah Ruhl has distilled from their voluminous correspondence a concise selection to create “Dear Elizabeth,” an epistolary play that is having its premiere at the Yale Repertory Theaterhere.

Aside from sparingly used subtitles and a couple of the subjects’ best-known poems, the play consists entirely of writings from the letters. On a simple set suggesting a shared study, the actors Mary Beth Fisher and Jefferson Mays read or recite from the correspondence, which begins shortly after the poets’ meeting in 1947 and concludes only with Lowell’s sudden death, from a heart attack in a taxi in 1977.

Occupying a hazy theatrical landscape somewhere between a staged reading, along the lines of A. R. Gurney’s durable “Love Letters,” and a fully staged play — the director, Les Waters, animates the back and forth with some whimsical touches of stagecraft — “Dear Elizabeth” provides a satisfying if ultimately superficial glimpse of a complicated relationship. The result feels a bit like trying to take in a rich, beautiful landscape through a window fogged by frost.

Bishop and Lowell were devoted friends and passionate admirers of each other’s work. Their instant intimacy almost inspired Lowell to propose marriage. Ten years after their first meeting, Lowell confessed in one of the correspondence’s most moving letters, “Asking you is the might have been for me, the one towering change, the other life that might have been had.”

And yet it is all but impossible to imagine the two as a happily married pair: Lowell’s turbulent romantic life included three marriages — to the writers Jean Stafford (brief and tempestuous) and Elizabeth Hardwick (long and somewhat less tempestuous) and finally to the writer and British aristocrat Caroline Blackwood. He fought frequent battles with alcoholism and later severe manic depression that landed him in mental hospitals more than once.

Bishop, meanwhile, was a lesbian and a lifelong wanderer. Essentially orphaned (her father died and her mother was institutionalized), she always had trouble putting down roots and never seemed to find a haven in the world for long. (One of the most morbidly funny anecdotes related is the pity Bishop received at the hands of a hairdresser, who upon learning that she was orphaned, said, “Kind of awful ain’t it, plowing through life alone.” ) Among her most celebrated poems is the villanelle “One Art,” recited here, a witty and deeply sad meditation on “the art of losing.”

Through the dizzying highs and lows of their lives, their correspondence was often a steadying rock. Glimmering throughout “Dear Elizabeth” is the sense that despite the occasional disasters that struck them, both individually and occasionally together, they drank deep of the solace that a shared passion for their art and mutual love brought them.

I’d like to report that Ms. Ruhl, Ms. Fisher and Mr. Mays fully capture the mildly gossipy, subtly witty, moving beauty of their rapport, but much about this production struck me as ill conceived. Both of the actors seem miscast, to begin with. Ms. Fisher’s performance is wry, dry and at times too schoolmarmish; although she sheds tears at least once, the shyness and desperate loneliness that haunted Bishop for much of her life never come through. I rarely give thought to recasting, but fantasies of Cherry Jones in the role kept springing to mind.

Mr. Mays is a superb technician — his tour-de-force performance in more than a half-dozen roles in the musical “A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder” was one of the delights of my theatergoing year — but surface polish is the last thing I wanted from his portrait of Lowell, who comes across in the letters as emotionally reckless but infinitely bighearted. Mr. Mays seems more like an Oxbridge don. Both actors attempt too ardently for my taste to turn the letters into performances. To move and entertain us, the letters simply need to be read with honest feeling and, above all, an understanding of the psychology behind them.

Mr. Waters’s attempts to indicate the dramatic events that sometimes must be read between the lines of the letters are not always felicitous. Lowell’s repeated psychological breakdowns are signaled by having Mr. Mays suddenly slide to the floor — a striking image of the debilitating (and often sudden) nature of his attacks. But having Ms. Fisher crisply remove from the desk a bottle of whiskey and start taking big slugs from it strikes me as a tasteless way to treat the terrible bouts of alcoholism from which she suffered. My heart sank with unease when I heard the (understandable) tittering in the audience.

Ms. Ruhl, who studied poetry before becoming a playwright, obviously has great respect and affection for both writers, and for those unfamiliar with the correspondence (published in 2008 under the title “Words in Air”), “Dear Elizabeth” will surely shed light on both the writers’ emotional and working lives.

Beautiful passages abound. Perhaps my favorite, from Bishop to Lowell, in generous admiration of his recent poems: “They all have that sure feeling, as if you’d been in a stretch when everything and anything suddenly seemed material for poetry — or not material, seemed to be poetry. If only one could see everything that way all the time. It seems to me it’s the whole purpose of art — that rare feeling of control, illuminating — life is all right.” Then, in a telling phrase that says much about their troubled lives, she adds: “For the time being.”

Dear Elizabeth

By Sarah Ruhl; directed by Les Waters; sets by Adam Rigg; costumes by Maria Hooper; lighting by Russell H. Champa; sound by Bray Poor; projections by Hannah Wasileski; dramaturgy by Amy Boratko; stage manager, Kirstin Hodges; music by Mr. Poor and Jonathan Bell. Presented by Yale Repertory Theater, James Bundy, artistic director; Victoria Nolan, managing director. At the Yale Repertory Theater, 1120 Chapel Street, New Haven; (203) 432-1234; yalerep.org. Through Dec. 22. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes.

WITH: Mary Beth Fisher (Elizabeth Bishop) and Jefferson Mays (Robert Lowell).

THE NEW YORK TIMES

Elizabeth Bishop / Letters

THE SPACE BETWEEN THE WORDS

LOOKING FOR THE LIFE OF ELIZABETH BISHOP 

IN HER LETTERS

by Monica Westin

Elizabeth Bishop’s correspondence with the editors at The New Yorker who published the majority of her poems, lasting from 1934 until the poet’s death in the fall of 1979, are a provocative gesture at revealing the woman behind the writing, but they leave the reader wanting much more—in a way that’s entirely apropos to the way she worked and lived.

Elizabeth Bishop
Photo by Alice Helen Methfessel

On the one hand, the letters are entirely fitting for both Bishop’s poetry and general ethos; the genius of her poems often lies in their sensitive impersonality, and at a time when confessional poetry was de rigueur, Bishop’s strength lay in restraining herself from personal sentiment and finding an articulate but reserved mode of expression. Bishop, a U.S. Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Prize winner, was also famously protective of her personal life, not wanting to be known as a lesbian poet. The letters echo this reticence, but in so doing they don’t round out any sense of the woman herself.

If you aren’t familiar with Bishop’s work or her biography, the letters are often somewhat puzzling or enigmatic. The bulk of the discussions between Bishop and her editors are mostly business (contracts and checks, which Bishop increasingly has a harder time tracking) and editorial minutiae, often punctuation, in submitted poems, with the poems under discussion rarely included in the volume. It’s best read with Bishop’s “Complete Poems” as a companion, after familiarizing yourself with Bishop’s personal life—her partner, Alice, is only mentioned in a few letters, with little reference to who she is. And while her letters mention names of poets, such as Bishop’s mentor Marianne Moore and lifelong pen-pal Robert Lowell, they’re often in passing. Bishop doesn’t gossip, and she discusses other writers usually only when their work she admires. It’s hard not to wish for more details about her personal relationships; for example, the majority of the letters are written when Bishop was living with her Brazilian partner Lota. Readers get no sense of the relationship and its breakdown into tempestuousness—or any explanation of Lota’s job as an architect, although Bishop describes some of her projects. After Bishop left her, Lota committed suicide while visiting her, but all we learn from the book is an italicized note between two letters that Lota had overdosed. Characteristically, none of Bishop’s letters comment on this event, and the moment in the book is jarring and confusing.

Joelle Biele’s well-researched editing and introduction help explain some of the tension between Bishop and the magazine, as well as beautifully introduce the editors at The New Yorker, who come across more fully and warmly than Bishop herself in their correspondence. Howard Moss, the avuncular and travel-phobic poetry editor and Katharine White, the charming and warm editor at large (and wife of E.B. White) clearly adore Bishop, and it’s captivating to watch them try to get her to send them poems. The strongest impression that Bishop makes is that of a somewhat absentminded, slightly negligent dreamer. It’s hard not to laugh as she promises to send a travel essay on Sable Island to White for almost a decade before White, after gently reminding her in various ways, gives up, but just as often you feel anxious on Bishop’s behalf as she promises them new work more quickly than she writes it. Anyone who has ever felt pressure to deliver writing for a deadline will feel the agony of Bishop, who produced less than a hundred poems in her lifetime, at feeling pressure from various editors to send more poems before she felt they were ready. Her contract with The New Yorker was a source of stress to her; she received a salary/allowance for giving them the first cut at poems she wrote, even if she wanted them to be published elsewhere, and the letters contain subtle bargaining and a less-than-subtle, but brief, break from her contract as her frustrations with the magazine mounted. The editorial process at The New Yorker was obviously exacting and often stifling for Bishop, though there are few moments when she expresses frustration.

The letters are most poignant towards the end of Bishop’s life, as she wrote “Geography III” and had many of its poems, including “One Art” (which Bishop describes as a poem that makes everyone sad), published in The New Yorker. But ultimately, unlike, say, the letters of Flannery O’Connor, which Bishop mentions reading in one of her later letters, this volume doesn’t stand on its own as a piece of literature—it’s just another puzzle piece in the enigmatic life of the poet.

This year marks the centennial of Elizabeth Bishop’s birth, and the University of Chicago’s program in poetry and poetics and The Poetry Foundation are sponsoring a free reading of the letters February 17, 6pm, at International House, 1414 East 59th Street, with parts read by local actors and editor Biele narrating and answering questions.

Elizabeth Bishop and The New Yorker: The Complete Correspondence
Edited by Joelle Biele
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $35, 496 pages

Elizabeth Bishop / One Art II

ONE ART II

by Elizabeth Bishop

One Art is considered one of the best villanelles in existence, and it is based on a relationship Bishop had with a woman named Alice Methfessel. They were domestic partners from 1971 to 1979, the year of Bishop’s death.

There are 16 drafts of this poem written in 1976. The first draft of One Art interests me because we can hear the woman in this, not just the poet. Her stream-of-consciousness writing in this draft is where many poems begin. The poem in its original state is all over the page emotionally. It took 15 more drafts for Bishop to craft in the understated tone she needed to give the poem power.

But that voice isn’t here. This is a poem written by an alcoholic who is losing her love because of frequent black outs. This is a woman who is losing her teaching job at Harvard because she is missing classes. She is losing her friends because she would say things to them when drunk she couldn’t remember later.

Bishop did not lose the relationship with Methfessel as she feared. She wrote about her, “Alice [is] a wonderful traveling companion. Since she is so athletic and big, tall, I mean – I thought I’d never keep up with her (and she is 28 or 29 too [in 1972] – but I manged to. I think you’d like her very much – very American in the nicest way; she cheers me up a lot about my native land – …. Alice has had a happy life and is the only child of devoted parents – pampered, really – but nevertheless has turned out to be kind and generous and very funny. – She’s good for me because she cheers me up.”

Brett Millier wrote about the couple in her book, Elizabeth Bishop Life and the Memory Of It, “Although Elizabeth still described Alice as her ‘young friend’ or ‘secretary’ to certain correspondents, very quickly ‘Elizabeth and Alice’ became a recognized couple in the circle of poets and teachers in which Elizabeth moved and in her letters to faraway friends.

“But an intimate relationship between apparently unequal partners, one of whom was an alcoholic, was bound to have its unruly energies. Alice grew weary from time to time of the great demands placed on her by Elizabeth’s pain and poor health; of the cycles of illness, drunkenness and injury that often marked the last years of Elizabeth’s life; and of doling out the Antabuse that helped to prevent such cycles from getting started. And Elizabeth lived in mortal fear of losing Alice and of what would happen if she were to be left alone to grow old and care for herself in her indispositions and incapacities. Alice’s attempts to put distance between herself and Elizabeth’s myriad problems resulted in desperate attempts on Elizabeth’s part to get her back.”

In the chaos of her life, Bishop created one of the most beautiful poems ever written. It begins here, it begins really in the last lines of the first draft when she starts trying to describe her lover’s blue eyes. You can see the writer failing then. You can see a person who is desperate to hold onto a woman she can’t imagine living her life without.

My favorite change in all the drafts is the last one she made. It is in the second line of the poem. For 15 drafts that line was, so many things seem really to be meant to be lost. It became so many things seem filled with the intent to be lost. She was stuck on the word meant for 15 drafts and sent the final version to the publisher with the awkward meant line. And then, maybe because she had let go of the poem, a way to use word intent came to her, something she had been considering for many drafts.

Semantically, they mean the same thing, but poetically the line flows much more easily with that final handwritten change called into her editor. It is the line that drew me to this poem so many years ago. It made me ask the question: Are there things in our life we can in no way keep from losing?

It is still a question I ask. It makes for a life of uncertainty, and that’s why this poem is so universally understood. The list of lost things in this poem are things we all lose: car keys, reading glasses, mortgages (she lost houses because she would forget to pay her mortgage), her mother’s watch, the hour badly spent, places and names we meant to travel. These lines are lifted out of life that has sorted through the mixture of things we lose, and the poem progresses slowly through each loss. She begins with car keys, persists through houses and places and ends in losing the woman she loves.

Bishop suggests all these losses in a villanelle, a quiet, elegant form. The villanelle gives the list dignity it wouldn’t have in free verse. But in the villanelle, each thing leans over and kisses us on the cheek as it passes.

When a poet finds the right form for a poem, the tuning fork of the poem sounds right to the ear. The poem has a certain balance it wouldn’t have otherwise. By the second draft of this poem it is starting to look like a villanelle. She had the repeating lines marked out and possible end words scribbled in. In her writing of it then through the various drafts, she remained curious about the poem. She wasn’t stifled by the form.

That’s the difficulty in writing in any form. You begin to think, no, I need a word that ends in “ing” here or I need to stick with iambic pentameter there. It keeps you from experimenting with the poem and changing the whole thing if the “ing” word doesn’t work or doesn’t feel right. Some possibilities begin to be dismissed. She allows the places in the poem she is working on to stay open and receptive to the voices she is hearing. She allowed all the same stream-of-consciousness writing to continue as she doodled in possibilities around the edges of each stanza, as the poem pressed her for new language or longer lines or a different title.

Writing poems is like taking music lessons. We begin writing down our thoughts, we begin with the technical work of writing sentences, and then the unexpected music rises out of the words, it isn’t thinking anymore, it is singing. It has departed into the music of its life. Words for the poem, like intent, rise out of a passing voice in a building or from a page in a book. The sensation of the poem rises in us and we imagine a line in a new way.

It is a useful way the muses have given us to pay attention to our imaginations. Every artist is blessed this way. They have another way of listening to the world. A soul and a poem are both connected to intuitions and unknown interests far away.

The fact that the poem became a villanelle so soon in its birth makes me believe that a poem has a form it is called to. This poem wanted to be a villanelle. A poem welcomes certain forms and dislikes others. This means that a poem has a life of its own, its own mind, its own voice, its own likes and dislikes just like a person does. And that means all art does. Art wants to be created in a way that welcomes in all the possibilities of its existence.

(Lines struck through are in red.)

HOW TO LOSE THINGS/? /The GIFT OF LOSING THINGS

One might begin by losing one’s reading glasses

oh 2 or 3 times a day – or one’s favorite pen.

THE ART OF LOSING THINGS

The thing to do is to begin by “mislaying”.

Mostly, one begins by “mislaying”:

keys, reading-glasses, fountain pens

- these are almost too easy to be mentioned,

and “mislaying” means that they usually turn up

in the most obvious place, although when one

is making progress, the places grow more unlikely

- This is by way of introduction.

I really want to introduce myself – I am such a

fantastic lly good at losing things

I think everyone shd. profit from my experiences.

You may find it hard to believe, but I have actually lost

I mean lost, and forever two whole houses,

one a very big one. A third house, also big, is

at present, I think, “mislaid” – but

Maybe it’s lost too. I won’t know for sure for some time.

I have lost one long (crossed out) peninsula and one island.

I have lost – it can never be has never been found –

a small-sized town on that same island.

I’ve lost smaller bits of geography, like

a splendid beach, and a good-sized bay.

Two whole cities, two of the

world’s biggest cities (two of the most beautiful

although that’s beside the point)

A piece of one continent –

and one entire continent. All gone, gone forever and ever.

One might think this would have prepared me

for losing one averaged-sized not especially——— exceptionally

beautiful or dazzlingly intelligent person

(except for blue eyes) (only the eyes were exceptionally beautiful and

But it doesn’t seem to have, at all … the hands looked intelligent)

the fine hands<

a good piece of one continent

and another continent – the whole damned thing!

He who loseth his life, etc… – but he who

loses his love – neever, no never never never again -

In the first drafts, we see her playing with the words start out with, begin with. She realizes she wants to open the poem showing the loss of small things and build toward larger ones. She’s writing in the repeat lines now. The awkward line, The mastered art of losing’s no disaster remains for many drafts before she finally changes it. We also have the first of the small things, car keys. We hear her working with irony, You’ll find your time well spent.

Drafts four, five and six are handwritten and unreadable, but in draft five she is trying out end words. In draft seven, we have reading glasses as another possible lost thing. And we see the humorous line, forget the faster-money. Ahome enters and the important word intent. That remains throughout the drafts. She knows she wants to use it but she’s not sure where yet.

[Draft 2]

The art of losing isn’t hard to master:

or many things seem really to be meant

to be lost that their loss is no disaster

Start out with

Begin with little things

her words where they went.

The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

The practice brings losses, lose them faster,

faster

The mastered art of losing’s no disaster.

Look! I’ve had ten houses

Look! and my last, or next to last,

Two cities,

[Draft 3]

the art of losing isn’t hard to master:

so many things seem almost to be meant

to be lost, that their loss is no disaster.

Begin with car keys

I’ll never

the art of losing isn’t hrd to master

The practice brings losses, lose them faster,

you’ll find your time well spent

the mastered art of loss is no disaster.

[Draft 4]

the art of losing isn’t hard to master

so many things really seem to be meant

to be lost, and the loss is no disaster —

Intent is really the key word in this poem. It says something about the person. If your intent deep down is to lose someone, you will no matter how big a show you put on to prove you want them in your life. To live with intention is to live paying attention to your feelings and what you really want. Bishop was drowning her feelings in alcohol. She may not have been aware what she wanted. It must have worried her that her intent all along was to lose Alice Methfessel.

Losing things and people had become a pattern in her life. Her partner of 15 years, Lota de Soares (1910 -1967), had committed suicide by overdosing on tranquilizers in 1967. Many of De Soares’ family and friends in Brazil blamed Bishop for the suicide. They felt Bishop abandoned De Soares when she was ill and depressed. This must have haunted the poet.

Bishop said, “I lost my mother, and Lota, and others, too–I’d like to try to save somebody, for a change.”

Bishop didn’t know her mother well and lived with relatives. When she was young, her father died and and her mother was committed to a mental asylum. She was sent to live with relatives in Nova Scotia. In the line, I lost my mother’s watch, I hear Bishop saying, I lost my mother. The watch may have represented her mother to her in some way.

[Draft 6]

(The handwriting is mostly unreadable.)

[Draft 7]

The art of losing not so hard to master:

so many things seem really to be meant

to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Start slowly will you, keep, a face, a gesture

Stood with your glasses

Reading-glasses, car–keys, you can master

easy things.

The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

The practice brings losses, lose them faster,

forget the faster-money, home, intent,

the mastered art of losing’s no disaster.

Look! I myself have lost or

next to last, at least, houses and

In drafts eight we see the “ent” at the end of lines. She knows what sound she is working toward, but she’s not quite sure how to get there yet. She adds the word innumerable here in draft nine. Here also is the word mortgages. She eventually lost the property she and De Soares owned in Brazil.

David Kalstone said about this in his biography about Bishop, A Poet’s Life, “[The suicide] was effectively the end of Bishop’s Brazilian life. She still owned the Ouro Preto house and returned there regularly for several years trying to make it her home, but the living tie that bound her to Brazil was broken and in the most devastating fashion. The life that once seemed to remind her of the way an orphaned child survived in Nova Scotia now reminded her only of her great losses. Their mutual friends in Rio refused to receive her, as if to say she had abandoned Lota; relatives sued to gain the properties Lota’s will had denied them. Bishop lost the house in Petropolis. She began living with a young woman she had met in Seattle. They took an apartment in San Francisco and spent part of the year in Ouro Preto. Bishop loved the house there, which she called Casa Mariana in honor of [Marianne] Moore, but was robbed blind by contractors and domestics in the course of trying to restore it and keep it going. ‘I suppose I had Lota for so long to intervene for me, in Petropolis, at least – and I really was happy there for many years,’ she wrote [Robert] Lowell in December 1969. ‘Now I feel her country really killed her – and is capable of killing anyone who is honest and has high standards and wants to do something good … and my one desire is to get out. But HOW TO LIVE?’ Or again, a few weeks later, of Lota: “I miss her more every day of my life. This is one of the reasons I want to leave Brazil (forgive me.)”

[Draft 8]

The art of losing isn’t hard to master

Practicing my

and possibly will end disaster

faster

ent

master

last, or

ent

disaster

ent

master

arts

ent

disaster

We see the word forgetting in draft nine. She was forgetful because of her alcoholism. Forgetting is another way of losing things. We still have the wordsspells disaster in this draft. She’s playing with the word spells because she’s going to place the word disaster behind it in quotes later. As if to say, “It’s a quote ‘disaster’” It’s not really a disaster but we’ll just say it’s one. The wordspells emphasizes that.

Disaster is a big word, and she knew that. She’s building the whole poem around that word, and she might have doubts about the poem’s tone. If you say something is a disaster, the tone must reflect that. By playing with these words, she’s asking questions of the poem, “How do I craft in the understated tone I want in this.” She wants to say the real disaster in life isn’t in losing things but people we love. She is implying that in losing small things we are working toward losing something larger. If we aren’t capable of holding on to small things, how can we hold on to important things.

In draft one, she quotes the beginning of a line from the Bible in the book of Matthew, He who loseth his life (for my sake shall gain it). And I wonder if she didn’t have other verses in the back of her mind from the book of Luke, “If a person can be trusted with small things, then he can also be trusted with big things. If a person is dishonest in little things, then he will be dishonest with big things too. If you cannot be trusted with worldly riches, then you will not be trusted with heavenly riches.”

Her mother’s watch enters in draft nine as well as a cape, an entire continent. The word geographical is seen for the first time. This is a word we associate with Bishop because of her book titles, Georgraphy III, North & South and Questions of Travel. Bishop not only lost the geography of places but of people she loved.

The interesting line all that I write is false first appears. And later that becomes,lies now, I’m writing lies now. You can hear the desperation in her voice. She’s pleading, I don’t want to lose these things but I don’t know how to stop. Keeping things is really important to me, but I don’t know how to hold on.

She’s also beginning to play with say it versus write it. She goes back and forth between those two possibilities until the final draft.

[Draft 9]

The art of losing isn’t hard to master:

innumerable thing seem really to be meant so many things that

to be lost, so their loss is no disaster.

Lose something everyday. Oh you can muster a list might muster

the usual list: car-keys keys, reading-glasses, mortgages unsent –

The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing bigger, losing faster,

forgetting faster

The practice losing big, losing faster: forgetting faster

places and name and where it was you meant

to go – None of them spells disaster disaster

Lose something every day. Oh, you can muster

the usual list:

Lose something eevery day. Lose every day. Oh ayone can muster

the the packages un sent

Look! I have lost my mother’s watch last two houses homes land my last, or

next-to-last on of my three houses. Where they went beloved houses.

isn’t a problem, much less a disaster.

I’ve lost two cities, loveley ones,

Two cities vanished, loveley ones, and vaster

losses a cape, a continent.

You won’t believe the losses I can master.

Look! I have lost my mother’s watch; my last, or

next-to-last of three beloved houses went they went

Look! I have lost my mother’s watch; my last, or

next-to-last of three loved houses went

into nowhere away somewhere, band they weren’t a disaster.

Two cities, lovely ones. And on to vaster

and vaster loss, a cape, a con an entire continent.

the art of losing isn’t hard to master.

geographical loss – a continent.

The art of losing isn’t too hard to master.

gesture?

All that I write is false, it’s evident

the art of losing isn’t hard to master.

oh no.

anythng at all anything but one’s love (Sat it: disaster.)

[Draft 10]

with one exception. (Write it here)

(Why not just write “disaster”?)

The art of losing isn’t hard to master:

so many things semm really to be meant

to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. A list might muster an hour’s

keys, reading glasses, money, good intent one one nights good intent

The art of losing is’t hard to master/

Then practise losing bigger, losing faster:

places, and names, and where it was you meant

to go – and none will spell disaster.

Look! I have lost my mother’s watch. My last, or

next-to-last of three loved houses. They went.

off into nowhere, but they weren’t disaster. nothing so serious as disaster

I’ve lost two cities, lovely ones. Then vaster

things, rivers, a cape, an entire continent. thing: islan a cape, a continent

The art of losing isn’t so hard to master.

But, losing you (eyes of Azure Aster)

But you if I lose you (eyes of azure aster)

all that I write is false. It’s evident lies, now. I’m writing lies now. It’s quite evident.

tha rt of losing isn’t hard to master.

I’ve written lies above. It’s evident

the art of losing isnt’ hard to master

with one exception. (Say it) That’s disaster.

with one exception (Write it!)

(Say it – yes, disaster.)

In draft eleven is, I’ve written lies. I wrote a lot of lies. This sounds like the speaking voice of a woman talking to someone she loves. I’ve lied to you. It’s all lies. I like that this voice is still here in drafts ten and eleven. She continues writing in the voice from the first draft. She wants that voice here whether we see it in the final version or not. That’s the beauty of poetry. We can delete lines, and they are still there energetically whether the reader sees them or not. And that energy, that desperate tone in the first draft remains throughout the poem. Lies, it’s all lies, you’re really the most important thing in the world to me keeps coming through.

[Draft 11]

The art of losing isn’t hard to master:

so many things we seem really to be meant

to be lost that their loss is no disaster. Lose something every day. Accept the fluster

Lose something every day. Grow comfortable with fluster

lost keys, glasses, hour’s intent.

lost keys, The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practise losing bigger, lose faster:

places, and names, and it was you meant

to go. none will spell disaster.

Look! I have lost my mother’s watch. My last, or

next-to-last of three loved houses went.

but nothing quite so serious as disaster.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. Then And faster

then segments of geography; a continent.

The art of losing”s not so hard to master.

But, losing you [eyes of the small wild aster]

above’s all lies now. It’s quite evident

the art of losing wasn’t hard to master

with one exception

except for (Say it! Say it!) that disaster.

I’ve written lies above. It’s evident

the art of losing wasn’t hard to master

in gnereal, but (Say it!)

with one exception, which

not one exception is

The art of losing wasn’t hard to master

All losing hasn’t een too hard to master

but losing you

My losses haven’t been too hard to master

with with but th

with this exception (Say it!) this disaster.

I”ve written lies. I wrote a lot of lies. It’s evident

the art of losing wasn’t hard to master

with one exception (Write it!) Write “disaster.”

In draft twelve she uses the word stupid. She strikes out Stupid! Write! Here is the inner voice coming through. You’re so stupid to lose her. What is wrong with you. Are you just stupid. A tortured voice is in these words. It reveals how insecure she is, I’m just stupid, I’m worthless, I’m just a loser.

[Draft 12]

The art of losing isn’t hard to master:

so many things seem really to be meant

to be lost that their loss is no disaster

Try losing every day. Accept the fluster

of the lost glasses, kesys, houses, intent.

The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing further, losing faster:

places, and names, and where it was you meant

to go. And non will spell disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And, look! my last, or

next-to-last of three loved houses went.

off into nowhere. That was not disaster.

I miss them. disaster. two rivers, then a cape; a continent.

— of geography: a cape, a continent

But losing you (even a a gesture)

above’s all lies now. It is evident

the art of losing isn’t wasn’t hard to master above’s not lies, but it is evident

with this exception (Write it!)

but there

will

generally speaking

But, losing you (even to or gesture)

above’s not lies – it’s only evident

the art of losing isn’t hard to master wasn’t

with this exception (Stupid! Write!)

(Write it!) this disaster.

except this loss (Oh, write it!) this disaster.

but this lost it (Go on! write it !) disaster.

But losing you

I haven’t lied above, It’s evident ( even gesture)

In draft thirteen is the first appearance of the wonderful an hour badly spent. It’s something so many people can relate to, the loss of time. We lose an hour of the day in traffic or on trivialities like finding lost car keys or reading glasses, and it’s very frustrating.

In draft thirteen, she finally begins to flesh out those awkward middle stanzas she’s been having trouble with. You can see her questioning, what should I put in here, we’ve got to go from car keys and my mother’s watch to something. But what? She picks places, realms and rivers and continents. She’s writing those words around the edges throughout the drafts, trying to work out how to get all this into three lines.

And she wants to hold on to the word lied. When you write a poem, you often have lines and words you don’t want to lose. Sometimes they trigger the writing of the poem. Giving them up for the sake of the poem is difficult, but she manages to hold onto lied until the end.

As we are winding down to the end, the tone of the poem begins to take shape. It reveals itself more and more. Tone is the hardest thing for a poet to hear. You can’t hear how another person is going to read your poem when you are in the thick of it. You lose all sense of that. But the poem starts to give hints that you are on the right track by giving you words and lines that haven’t come before. The poem starts softening in your hands. It’s not the hard clay you began with. It’s the poem’s way of saying, “You’re getting this right.” And that’s what we see in the final three and four drafts, the words starting to fall into place.

If you write a beautiful poem and have the wrong tone, the poem falls flat on its face. She wanted to flatten out the tone enough that the words would have weight. To scream something in a poem, you must say it quietly. And that quiet tone has entered in now. She isn’t screaming at us anymore, neever, no never never never again.  She wanted to scream, It’s all lies! It’s all lies! You’re the most important thing in the world to me but that wouldn’t engage the reader’s interest as much.

[Draft 13]

The art of losing isn’t hard to master:

so many things seem really to be meant

to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster

of lost door-keys, an hour badly spent.

The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing further, losing faster:

places, and names, and where it was you meant

to go. none will spell disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch, lovely ones, And, vaster,

small realms, two rivers, then a continent. some realms of mine, two rives, a continent

I miss them, but I would not say disaster.

I’d never say disaster.

And losing you new (a special voice, a gesture)

doesn’t mean I’ve lied. It’s evident

the loss of love is possible to master,

even if this looks like (Write it!) like disaster.

In losing you I haven’t lied above. It’s evident

does not mean that I’ve I’m lying. It’s evident

the loss of love is something one must master

even which it look like (Write it!) like disaster.

[Draft 14]

The art of losing isn’t hard to master:

so many things seem really to be meant

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.

The practice losing further, losing faster:

places, and names, and where it was you meant

to travel. None of these will spell 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 of mine, two rivers, a continent x I owned,

I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

Even In losing you (a joking voice, a gesture

I love), I haven’t lied. It’s evident

the art of losing’s not too hard to master

even when it looks (Oh write it!) like disaster.

Although it looks like (Write it) like disaster

though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

These are not lies.

though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

By draft 15 we are finally done with really to be meant, which bothered her all the way through. In almost every draft she plays with that line, crossing parts out, writing words in, trying to discover a way around the word really.

And the word lies is still here. I still won’t lie finally becomes I shan’t have lied in the final draft. I shan’t have lied doesn’t have the tone of, This is all lies, lies. The word shan’t is proper. It’s not a common word but shouldn’t is two syllables, and she needs a one syllable word to keep the line flow. Using shouldn’twouldn’t have been as seamless.

If I hadn’t seen the it’s all lies in the other drafts, I wouldn’t notice the shan’t have lied. She flattens the tone out so much with that word. When I recite this poem to people who don’t know Elizabeth Bishop or the poem One Art, I always stumble on the word shan’t because it’s not a word I use. As soon as I say it, the poem is placed in a time and diction we don’t use anymore, and I see that recognition in people’s eyes.

She uses parenthesis in the final stanza around both a joking voice, a gesture I love and Write it! She’s making these parenthetical expressions to tone down the words even more. Bishop is a master. She wants us to notice this, so she puts it in parenthesis. A phrase is normally put in parenthesis to say its incidental to the reading. But by placing these words in parenthesis in her poem, Bishop gives them emphasis. Once again, she’s emphasizing something by toning it down.

She also finds a place for her exclamation points. It is found elsewhere after the word look, but it ends up in these final lines as well. This poem had been an exclamation point inside her all along.

[Draft 15]

ONE ART

The art of losing isn’t hard to master:

so many things seem really to be meant 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 (a joking voice, a gesture

I love), these (no lies. It’s evident

the art of losing’s not too hard to master

though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

even losing you (the joking voice, It’s evident

(Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture

I love) I still won’t lie. It’s evident.

One Art (Final Draft, published 1976)

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.

We lose some of the wonderful things from the first draft, The fine hands, the blue eyes. She tries to put the blue eyes in at one point using the words azureand eyes of small wild aster. She couldn’t come up with a way to do that. She wants to say, losing all these other things in life should have prepared me to lose the woman I love, but it hasn’t.

http://bluedragonfly10.wordpress.com/2009/04/02/one-art/

Real also
ELIZABETH BISHOP / ONE ART