Clearly, this is a case where losing and letting go are not interchangeable.

The art of letting go

isnt hard to master makes for lousy poetry, failing both rhythmically and rhetorically. What makes
the original line and the poem so strong is lossthe stark, uncontrollable, and increasingly
disastrous quality of the losses it enumerates in such a casual, almost nonchalant tone.
So what is the difference between losing and letting go? What makes losing feel like such a disaster?
On an obvious level, its about control. When I let go, Im in control; when I lose, Im not. Letting go is
a willful act; losing, a violation of my will.

The loss of love here is not over and thereby mastered, but threatened: a
possibility brooded upon, or an act being endured. How Bishop dramatizes the
threatened loss is uncanny. "I shant have lied," she claims. Under such intense
emotional pressure she shifts to the decorous "shant," as if the better to distance
and control her response to this loss, the newest and last.

The poem begins rather boldly with the curious claim that "the art of losing isnt hard to master" (1.1).
The speaker suggests that some things are basically made to be lost, and that losing them therefore
isnt a big deal. She suggests that we get used to loss by practicing with little things, like house keys
or a little bit of wasted time here and there; the idea is that if youre comfortable with the insignificant
losses, youll be ready to cope when the big ones come along.
The losses mentioned in the poem grow more and more significant. First its the things we try to
remember, like names and places, then more specific items, such as a mothers watch or homes one
has loved in the past. As these things begin to pile up, we wonder how much the speaker
has actually mastered this so-called "art of losing." Is she really as glib (that is to say, smart-alecky)
as she sounds, or does she still have deep feelings about all of these things? Were not so sure.
However, the last stanza reveals a whole lot to us. We discover that the loss that really bothers her is
that of a beloved person (friend, family, or lover, we dont know). She attempts rather feebly to claim
that even this loss isnt a "disaster," though it appears to be one; at this point, though, we see that
she really is still sad about the loss, and hasnt truly gotten over it.

Do I require everything to be completely organized and without flaw? Can I deal with life not being
perfect? I dont think so, but we find out things over the span of our lives. We hopefully become aware
of what we are like and what we are made. I know one of my greatest attributes is the ability to see how
to organize almost everything better, cataloging you might say. Long ago, I decided to stop and smell
the roses and to always never lose sight of what is important in life. Sometimes its the flaws in life that
add color and flavor. None of us are perfect. If you think yourself perfect, you are living in a fantasy
world. I never want to lose that tenant. There are few reasons for deleting portions of our lives. The

people, my friends and family, dont have to be perfect. I dont want to master the art losing what is
really important in lifechildren, family, friendslost moments that you can never get back again. Just
because you value those things in life doesnt mean you dont have a line that should not be crossed in a
relationship.

The art of losing isnt hard to master is, after all, ironic, since what is mastered is how to lose things
mastering the art of losing is, in effect, to become so good at loss that one loses everything. Life becomes
equivalent to loss, though never quite equal to it. So many things seem to want to be lost that no individual
loss need be a disaster. And yet it is, because theres that word, over and over. One starts with small things,
and then moves on to bigger challenges, things harder to lose (places, names, houses, cities, two rivers, a
continent) but more painful for the immensity of their loss. The lost objects grow larger and larger, as if to
flaunt how lightly the speaker takes even the seemingly greatest loss. And then one returns to the
seemingly small, one irreplaceable thing, which is the largest, most painful loss of all: you. Beside this
loss, all the other losses are insignificant. The speaker wont have lied (and note the echoes of I shant
have died in I shant have lied) in saying that the art of losing isnt hard to master, for look, shes lost the
most important thing in the world, one simple pronoun, the joking voice, a gesture/I love. The voice has
stumbled, cant go on, as evidenced by the stammer on like. Write it! demands that she go on, that she
speak the word disaster, admit that this loss was indeed a disaster. At this point the poise the voice has
maintained (nothing has been a disaster) breaks down; the rhetorical gesture enacts the visceral pain that
the poems smooth surfaces heretofore have kept at bay. The voice can hardly say the word disaster, yet
she must finally admit it, both say it (write it) and admit the immensity of the loss into her consciousness.
After all these denials (denials haunted by the repetition of the word), it is disaster after all.