My other favorite poem: "One Art"

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.
(Elizabeth Bishop)

This lovely poem is written in a dificult form -the Villanelle.(see link below)

Bishop begins with what seems to be, in effect, a 'handbook' on dealing with progressively greater losses.
Initially the poem seems to be humorous, even as the losses become greater and greater.

In the last stanza however, the cover of humor and exaggeration are dropped just enough to give us a glimpse of the speaker's true anguish, and the poem is revealed to be a love poem.

Here's the link re: villanelles
http://www.uni.edu/english/craft/villanelle.html[/color]