So, back and ready to go. I had to look Bishop up. And while doing that, came upon a translation into German (!!!) on crazy_chicken's website:

Die Kunst des Verlierens
Die Kunst des Verlierens studiert man täglich. So vieles scheint bloß geschaffen,
um verloren zu gehen und so ist sein Verlust nicht unerträglich.

Lerne zu verlieren, Tag für Tag.
Akzeptiere den Aufruhr um Schlüssel, die du verlierst.

Ich verlor zwei Städte, verlor zwei Flüsse, einen Kontinent.
Ich vermisse sie, aber es war nicht unerträglich.

Selbst dich zu verlieren, deine scherzhaften Worte; eine Geste, die ich liebe.
Sogar hier wird es wahr sein.

Ich werde sehen, die Kunst des Verlierens studiert man täglich.
Auch wenn es einem vorkommt als wär’s (schreibs auf!): als wär’s unerträglich.

Elizabeth Bishop
The art of losing

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.

So: I really have to read her now, especially if there are people out there translating her.

oblivion wrote:So, back and ready to go. I had to look Bishop up. And while doing that, came upon a translation into German (!!!) on crazy_chicken's website:



Elizabeth Bishop
The art of losing

Thank you for posting a poem. Well, how does it sound in German? Of course in English there are the rhymes, is there rhyming in the German translation? This is the only Bishop that I was already knew and a poem I like. It is a jaunty presentation of the idea that 1/2 of the equation of life is loss. What about that last line - the insertion of (Write it!)?

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

Saffron wrote:

oblivion wrote:So, back and ready to go. I had to look Bishop up. And while doing that, came upon a translation into German (!!!) on crazy_chicken's website:



Elizabeth Bishop
The art of losing

Thank you for posting a poem. Well, how does it sound in German? Of course in English there are the rhymes, is there rhyming in the German translation? This is the only Bishop that I was already knew and a poem I like. It is a jaunty presentation of the idea that 1/2 of the equation of life is loss. What about that last line - the insertion of (Write it!)?

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

When I heard oblivion was going to join us, I wanted to ask her if Bishop had been translated into German, and she beat me to it. I was surprised at the formal difference between the poem in English and the translation (the only aspect I can judge, unfortunately). Is it common for translators not to preserve the stanza forms and basic line length?

Here is my impression by Bishop's last line:
"though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster."

By the exclamation "Write it!" is a command - you have no choice, accept loss - there is no life without loss.

Saffron wrote:

DWill wrote:That's a good trick--read 100 of her poems, and you've read all the work of a major 20th Century poet. By way of further biography, here is "Skunk Hour," by Bishop's good friend, Robert Lowell. I'm not sure how, precisely, the poem applies to EB, but I've liked it for a while now.

Hey, wasn't there a book out a year or so ago of the letters between Lowell & Bishop? Didn't you read it? I like the images in the Lowell poem, but not entirely sure I got it. Any help out there?

I'm not too sure I can explain the poem, since what I like most about it is its rhyme and rhythms, the images, and the eeriness of the ending. I like the frank insanity of the speaker, too ("my mind's not right"), and the echo of Milton's Satan ("Myself am Hell"). I don't suppose the hermit heiress is EB, but then again, her son's a bishop and EB would have the cash to buy up all these properties. We know exactly what Lowell means by the LL Bean Millioniaire. I suppose that all the human silliness and the weird permutations that only our human minds can create, are in contrast to the instinctual naturalness of the skunk family. Maybe as we read more of Bishop we'll see why Lowell dedicated the poem to her. By the way, Bishop returned the favor, dedicating "Armadillo," a poem that seems at least as good as "Skunk Hour," to Lowell.

Saffron wrote:Here is my impression by Bishop's last line:
"though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster."

By the exclamation "Write it!" is a command - you have no choice, accept loss - there is no life without loss.

Maybe "write it!" is stronger than "say it!" would be.

I think I can already see that in just 100 poems over her career, Bishop displays a wide range. She can be pretty straightforward, as here and in "The Fish," and downright difficult, as in "Monument." I really have no idea what that one's about (yet).

I'll read "Map" later and try to say something about it.

DWill wrote: I suppose that all the human silliness and the weird permutations that only our human minds can create, are in contrast to the instinctual naturalness of the skunk family. Maybe as we read more of Bishop we'll see why Lowell dedicated the poem to her. By the way, Bishop returned the favor, dedicating "Armadillo," a poem that seems at least as good as "Skunk Hour," to Lowell.

Yes, the idea of contrasting the human clan to the skunk helps and I think, right on the mark. The day you posted this poem the poem delieverd to me as my daily dose of poetry from poets.org was a poem written for Whitman and linked me to a poem for EB. I'd been planning to post both poems, so here the are, first the poem for EB.

Birdcall
by Alicia Suskin Ostriker


—for Elizabeth Bishop

Tuwee, calls a bird near the house,
Tuwee, cries another, downhill in the woods.
No wind, early September, beeches and pines,

Sumac aflame, tuwee, tuwee, a question and a faint
But definite response, tuwee, tuwee, as if engaged
In a conversation expected to continue all afternoon,

Where is?—I’m here?—an upward inflection in
Query and in response, a genetic libretto rehearsed
Tens of thousands of years beginning to leave its indelible trace,

Clawprint of language, ritual, dense winged seed,
Or as someone were slowly buttoning a shirt.
I am happy to lie in the grass and listen, as if at the dawn of reason,

To the clear communal command
That is flinging creaturely will into existence,
Designing itself to desire survival,

Liberty, companionship,
Then the bird near me, my bird, stops inquiring, while the other
Off in the woods continues calling faintly, but with that upward

Inflection, I’m here, I’m here,
I’m here, here, the call opens a path through boughs still clothed
By foliage, until it sounds like entreaty, like anxiety, like life

Imitating the pivotal move of Whitman’s "Out of the Cradle,"
Where the lovebird’s futile song to its absent mate teaches the child
Death—which the ocean also whispers—

Death, death, death it softly whispers,
Like an old crone bending aside over a cradle, Whitman says,
Or the like the teapot in Elizabeth Bishop’s grandmother’s kitchen,

Here at one end of the chain of being,
That whistles a song of presence and departure,
Creating comfort but also calling for tears.

Granada Sings Whitman
by Nathalie Handal

By the river Genil
lovers sing what belongs to the water,
a shoemaker sings the dream he had,
his helper the dream he didn't,
a man sings to the woman
on the broken mattress,
death at midday sings,
on the banks of the Darro
a blind thief
collecting golden poplars sings,
and so does the crevice of quivers,
the saints flaming in la Sierra
and the men rehearsing a country.
They know nothing stays,
but when Whitman sings—
they allow his voice
to take them apart.

Saffron wrote:Here is a link to an interview with Bishop:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/features/video/10

Elizabeth Bishop: Comprehensive Research and Study Guide by Harold Bloom
http://books.google.com/books?id=bbXXEn ... op&f=false

As DWill said, I think we can find just about any of Bishop's poems online. I just picked one to get us started. This is the first poem in her book Poems: North & South - A Cold Spring , pub 1955.

The Map

Land lies in water; it is shadowed green.
Shadows, or are they shallows, at its edges
showing the line of long sea-weeded ledges
where weeds hang to the simple blue from green.
Or does the land lean down to lift the sea from under,
drawing it unperturbed around itself?
Along the fine tan sandy shelf
is the land tugging at the sea from under?

The shadow of Newfoundland lies flat and still.
Labrador's yellow, where the moony Eskimo
has oiled it. We can stroke these lovely bays,
under a glass as if they were expected to blossom,
or as if to provide a clean cage for invisible fish.
The names of seashore towns run out to sea,
the names of cities cross the neighboring mountains
-the printer here experiencing the same excitement
as when emotion too far exceeds its cause.
These peninsulas take the water between thumb and finger
like women feeling for the smoothness of yard-goods.

Mapped waters are more quiet than the land is,
lending the land their waves' own conformation:
and Norway's hare runs south in agitation,
profiles investigate the sea, where land is.
Are they assigned, or can the countries pick their colors?
-What suits the character or the native waters best.
Topography displays no favorites; North's as near as West.
More delicate than the historians' are the map-makers' colors

She has spent a lot of time looking at maps, and she also knows how to fish. That's two good things about Elizabeth Bishop! Kay Ryan reminds me of her, by the way. I have some feelings about maps, too, about their relationship to what they represent, but as Bishop tells us really well here, maps create their own impressions independent of the physical world. She looks at the map a bit like a painting. I'm thinking that this poem illustrates how our expectations of what a poem should be influence whether we think we understand it or not. if we expect a message, we don't get it here (as I see it). Even to expect summarizable content may be the wrong expectation with some poems.

There is an interesting youtube video of EB reading the poem with maps superimposed. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vn17Rjk2VUs

Will, I wonder that you do not conduct Poetry seminars - what a wonder guide you make. Thanks for the little trek through The Map. I love reading this poem. I hadn't really thought about what it meant, but enjoyed the idea of the representation of water and land on maps and how a map influences how we think of the actual land it represents. One of my favorite maps is the world map upside down from how we in the northern hemisphere generally position it. It is a mind bender.

You're too kind--thanks. Have a great time in Ohio and tell her congrats for me.