Love, Loss

      Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Bishop could have been the poetic American power couple of the 20th century.

Robert Lowell

    He was the scion of an eminent literary family whose highly personal work inspired a wave of confessional poets. She was a writer's writer who kept personal details out of her work. They were very close; for a while he thought it would be "a matter of time before (he) proposed." Bishop's career would no doubt have been boosted had they wed. 

    So why didn't they? His brutal bouts of mental illness might have been a factor, along with the fact that Bishop was (quietly) gay. 

Elizabeth Bishop

    

    So they wrote each other a great many letters, critiqued and improved each other's verses, and ended up living on different continents. Lowell bared his soul in public and kept on collecting acclaim. Bishop lived in Brazil for fifteen years, declining to discuss her relationship with a female architect, and remained relatively obscure. They both died in the 1970s after much personal struggle. 

    Bishop is probably the more well-known poet these days. Lowell probably wouldn't have minded that very much. Here's the most famous song from the pen of his longtime friend. 

    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.