Date: Thu, 11 Sep 1997 09:46:43 -0700 (PDT)
From: Tom Grey <tgrey-AT-leland.Stanford.EDU>
Subject: Re: PLC: Poetry vs. Prose


On Thu, 11 Sep 1997, George Trail wrote:

> >>
> >
> >	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 isn't hard to master
> >	though it may look like (*write* it!) like disaster.
> >
> >Blythe Danner gives a fine reading of this poem as the conclusion to the
> >TV show biography of Bishop in the PBS series edited by Helen Vendler that
> >was on a few years back, and is occasionally rerun. I think the poem
> >avoids the excessive heaviness and predictability that is the bane of the
> >villanelle, and that even Thomas's remarkable one does suffer from to some
> >extent. Of course she does bend the strict rules partly to gain this
> >advantage, but I think there's no doubt the poem should count as an
> >example of the type.
> >
> > -- Tom Grey       Stanford CA      tgrey-AT-leland.stanford.edu
> 
> Thanks. Interesting contrast. Thomas takes the softest of subjects (the
> death of a parent), that about which one is  likely to become maudlin and
> sentimental, and puts it is the hardest of forms and presents it without a
> shred of irony. Bishop takes a much slighter subject and presents a master
> class in hyperbolic litotes.

I agree about the difference in rhetorical strategy, but is the loss of
a longtime lover - Bishop's subject - really *that* much slighter than the
loss of a parent?

 -- Tom Grey       Stanford CA      tgrey-AT-leland.stanford.edu