The Art of Losing

Monday-ish Thoughts

1. My Lit prof is so awesome and I love her. Toward the end of lecture today, she gave a very impassioned and persuasive argument for why metaphors have magic powers and similies are for sissies. *grins*
2. Japanese religions class was a brilliant idea. Most of the lecture today was an overview of Buddhist terms of import (Buddha names, schools of Zen, meditation techniques etc) and a discussion on cultural appropriation and de-mystifying Zen Buddhism. Fun and informative.
3. Being the only Wiccan in the class when a professor asks if anyone has ever done magic is equal parts loltastic and so awkward.
4. California weather fails, and I hate living in the dorms with no A/C. Max overheated and shut spontaneously shut down this afternoon while I was playing Sims, which I was NOT HAPPY about. I'm going to have to bust out my desk fan in the next few weeks if it stays this warm. DDD: Geez, you'd think being from the desert I'd be used to this sort of thing.

In P&P today we talked about closed forms - mostly villanelles and sestinas - and why poets would choose something so strict. It was pretty neat, since those fall so easily into nothing more than academic exercises, but can work really well if they are right. So today's poem is a villanelle by Elizabeth Bishop.

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.