April is National Poetry Month! Elizabeth Bishop, "One Art"

Once again, I celebrated April Fools' Day along with the first day of National Poetry Month by writing "My last duchess" on the whiteboard for class; once again, nobody got it. Maybe if if hadn't gotten erased before the classmate who has a PhD in English came in...

The class (Subject Cataloging) celebrated April Fools by beating the stuffing (pun intended) out of a pinata shaped like the first volume of the Dewey Decimal Classification. Mondo fun.


Everybody loves a villanelle! Elizabeth Bishop, "One Art." I like how this builds up from petty little things into precious things and finally to some precious person.


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 beloved 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!) a disaster.