Dedicated to Lisa,a fellow Anglophile
Edgar Allan Poe & The Juke-Box is a group of uncollected poems, drafts and fragments from Elizabeth Bishop. T
here are 108 poems, some prose, notes she took, some sketches, facsimiles of her papers, and other pieces that I am not sure how to label. Obviously this is a book that will appeal most to people who are already Elizabeth Bishop fans. I am not a long time fan of Bishop, but just have recently started researching her work.A few years ago there was a reading of her work in the city that I tried to get last minute tickets to and was shut down. It has been a long running joke between a friend and myself. We are both English teachers who were not at all familiar with Bishop and when it seemed everyone and their mother were going to hear the reading we thought surely we must be missing out on something amazing.
Review: So hear I am on the one book a week quest and decided it was time for Bishop. This book is huge (367 pages) and really spectacular. I think that if you do not know anything about Bishop this is a great place to start. I totally was able to get a clear sense on her range of writing, style and influences. This particular book was edited by Alice Quinn and was created from 3,500 pages in the Bishop archive. http://specialcollections.vassar.edu/exhibits/bishop/essay1.html
One poem worth mentioning,that had multiple drafts in this book and was published in The New Yorker on April 26, 1976 is One Art.
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.
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.
