The Art of Losing | Big Joel
Вставка
- Опубліковано 21 жов 2024
- Let's talk about my favorite poem, One Art by Elizabeth Bishop
Support me on Patreon: / bigjoel
Follow me on Twitter: / biggestjoel
Mothcub's UA-cam Channel: / mothcub
Follow Mothcub's Twitter: / cubmoth
One Art
BY ELIZABETH BISHOP
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.
☼ Wooo I hoped you liked this one! It was drawn by the lovely mothcub, who you can find at twitter.com/cubmoth! Also, if you DID like it, consider donating to my patreon, which would be rad as hell imo: www.patreon.com/bigjoel
☾ One small footnote/clarification: In the video, I said that "losing, at least the kind of losing that Bishop is describing, can't be intentional." This isn't entirely true. I meant to say that SOME of the losing that Bishop describes can't be intentional. Losing keys or your mother's watch, for instance. Kind of nit-picky thing, but I wish I had said "some" lol.
I appreciate this footnote quite a bit! Excellent video Joel (&mothcub) keep up the wonderful work!
I love this interpretation. I always assumed the poem was about Alzheimer's disease.
I did! I did like it, Big Joel. Thank you very much
If you read “losing” literally it is either ironic or shorthand for “accepting unintended losses”. However, poetry is designed to speak more figuratively than this. So, what is intentional like art, but entails loss? Sacrifice. And sacrifice is not really easy to do, even for people who have plenty to spare.
It's not a stupid poem; and it's not the first time it's been read to me
the illustrations are soooooo pleasing to my eyes
Omg hiiii
UA-cam is a small world
heyy
Yeah shoutout to mothcub for the incredible art
i want to put this art in my mouth
“You don’t not give life to the art, it kinda just... leaves you” as a writer I felt that holy shit
such a beautiful way to portray the way art is interpreted differently by every viewer!
the reader gives it life, i’m sorry, i’m sorry, i’m sorry,
Can we take a sec just to appreciate the art? It's just so beautifully simple. For someone who has eye problems, thank you for making your videos so pleasing to look at.
Mothcub rulez
It’s made by mothclub. And it’s also a cool club
they are very cool haha
Is it rude to ask about those eye problems? My husband has retinitis pigmentosa and he jokes that other people with eye problems are his brethren lol. Don't answer if you don't want to
I just have above average myopia and my eyes strain quite easily
A professor once told me, "Poems are an anti-dictionary, where words can mean anything"
i like that
Hm. Nah, I feel like that would belittle (and kind of randomize) the very precise and compressing craft of poetry
If you Google Paul Dirac, you'll find a quote expressing a similar sentiment:
_In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it's the exact opposite._
-
He also has another quote, "Pick a flower on Earth and you move the farthest star," which sounds pretty poetic to me.
That's a bit glib of your professor... If you love words, you would know they don't just mean anything.
@@LambentOrt does your heart truly retch for words, though, if it's a mousy truth that they are petrol?
I absolutely love this video. I had never read this poem before, but after your recitation of it my first interpretation of it was more similar to your second take than the first. It's a really good poem.
"The yearning of my heart" 💜
How is this comment 20 hours old
@@N00DL35 This person is probably a patron and thus had early access to the video
same
Same.
FWIW, my initial interpretation was that the poem was about growing old and forgetful, and trying to gracefully accept that they'd misplace things, but then they start to forgot entire chunks of their life, and finally the memory of someone they loved.
:(
Huh. I had the same thought.
Yeah I also read this as like an Alzheimer’s thing
Uh oh stage 6 moment
That's a really touching reading, thanks for sharing that interpretation!
Same with a side of processing grief, which is another part of aging. You lose people but must also bid farewell and done well it is not passive.
My interpretation when I first read this poem was that “the art of losing” referred to sort of becoming desensitized to losing things, the author increasing the magnitude of the thing being lost trying to cope in a way by saying that the art of losing is easy, that losing things gets easier, but at the end she snaps revealing that losing things isn’t easy, and we can’t and don’t have to pretend it’s easy to lose things. Cool video tho, I liked your interpretation a lot.
Samee
Samee
My interpretation was similar to this as well! I tend to catastrophize a lot, and I felt really close to the poem bc this is what one does when one thinks everything's gonna go wrong, no matter what. You put yourself in worse and worse situations until you feel numb enough, but in the end, a single straw breaks the camel's back, and you're forced to admit your own vulnerability. The art of losing might be the art of learning to be a good loser
Tbh same
i thought this too, and it's amplified by the loss of the joking voice and gesture, maybe she's talking about the loss of her own reactions (hence being desensitized)
For me, the "art of losing" translates to "acceptance that (something) is lost" because, as you said, art implies some sort of premeditation. We can train our ability to accept what's lost, to get better at it, but there are things we will never accept they're lost, and that is fine.
Funny how she's ready to lose things like towns and continents, things that she probably does have only in her imagination. But when she gets to losing things she certainly has, in this case her creation and opinions, she realises "oops aight maybe not so easy to accept this loss".
It could also be about leaving entire cities and continents behind, and having to let go
I lost my hometown, 25 years ago. I'm 5000 km away now and when people ask if I'll ever go back, I won't; my hometown is gone and what's there now isn't mine.
I take it as the "okay, this is hard" moment to be speaking about a present disaster she is grieving. The "Art of Losing" is the grieving process and at the start of the poem she's in denial that the loss is as hard as it truly is. All these things she's lost before and didn't or no longer cries for their loss. Those losses weren't disasters. However as she recalls what she has just lost, you, it becomes harder to push aside. She even has to force herself with "Write it!" to admit the disaster has occurred, or at least what "looks like...disaster".
I read this poem in school and wasn't really into it but your recital of it and your interpretation has really made me appreciate it a lot more (also probably the fact that I'm not stressing to come up with an interpretation of it in an hour helps). Thank you Large Joel :)
:)
@@BigJoel :) you did a good youtube
My take on the poem is that to lose something, you have to have it in the first place. You have to master the art of intentionally having something and knowing you will eventually lose it. The whole idea of "someone has to leave first" if you will. So losing further and losing faster, means you have to go out and experience life. Knowing that one day you might lose the things you have come to love.
I really like your interpretation!
Yes. This one is good.
I can't get over how well mothcub captures your likeness
It is the sweater, right?
There’s a Daoist quality to this poem. The art of losing is an intentional unintentionality. It is a way of wu wei.
I googled ‘wu wei’ and the top result I got was an article by The School of Life :^)
The art of not losing your spirit via ejaculation. Daoism is a kaleidoscopic mirror of what you want to see and already know to be true.
You get a like for knowing your Chinese philosophy. I'm more of a legalist myself... Lord Shang rulz! Although his ending wasn't exactly nice.
@@octavianpopescu4776 You get a like for the amazing use of understatement as a rhetorical device with your “wasn’t exactly nice” description.
@@CSHallo Could you explain how it's like wu wei? I don't see it. Cheers
I always thought of “the art of losing” as self sabotage, that the speaker throws things and relationships away before she can lose them so it might hurt less,, I hadn’t thought of it as literal art before, and I absolutely love your interpretation. Thanks for the video :)
i for one like it when big joel 'goes off' on a particular esoteric thing, like a supreme court case or a poem
The Left can be a pretty austere place. I'm glad we have people like Gargantuan Joelseph around, reminding us to carpe our diems.
Someone else already carpe'd all my DMs.
Why does politics have to be involved in this
Save some soy for the rest of us
Dark Spiro
Because... because Big Joel is a political youtuber? And so his community represents that?
@@code8825 I always saw him as just a person who took a deeper look at art eh whatever
“You see this goblet?” asks Achaan Chaa, the Thai meditation master. “For me this glass is already broken. I enjoy it; I drink out of it. It holds my water admirably, sometimes even reflecting the sun in beautiful patterns. If I should tap it, it has a lovely ring to it. But when I put this glass on the shelf and the wind knocks it over or my elbow brushes it off the table and it falls to the ground and shatters, I say, ‘Of course.’ When I understand that the glass is already broken, every moment with it is precious.”
~ version by Mark Epstein (from Thoughts Without a Thinker: Psychotherapy from a Buddhist Perspective)
This is exactly what I took from the poem. It's about the art of impermanence. The "You" at the end of the poem - the hardest thing for the poet to master the art of losing - is herself. It's the realization of the selfless nature of consciousness, and the acceptance that these thoughts and gestures we identify with will one day come to an end. Beautiful poem!
"You see this cup? This is literally my favorite cup. *throws the cup out a window* Now it's gone forever, so it's not real and I don't care about it anymore." - Jake the Dog, Adventure Time
Reminds me of John Murillo’s variation on this poem, I think it’s a very good iteration of the theme.
“Remember what is given can be taken; what can be taken will. This you can bet on without losing.”
The art style is always fitting more and more with the commentary, great resonance
It makes a lot of sense that Big Joel’s favorite movie is Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. A film about people literally choosing to forget.
Holy shit. Thanks for the tip on that film. I’d never seen it before until now because of your comment.
I owe you one.
I need to watch that again; I was in a very dark place the first time.
god i cant believe i just cried over the idea of a poem being finished
God me too!!
oh god joel... my girlfriend would read this to me all the time. we broke up just over a week ago and this was devastatingly beautiful
I hope you're doing well, friend
Ironic
I'm 2.5 months post-breakup. I see it's been a while since you wrote this, how would you say you're handling it now?
I'm two months post-breakup. I see it's been a while since you two wrote this. How would you say you're handling it now?
Four days after a breakup,how are u guys doing?
Seriously, more of this stuff please Joel. Your literature analysis is easy to digest and leaves enough for the viewer to do some of their own thinking about the works as well. You're fabulous.
Big Joel I came to watch you tear School of Life and PragerU apart not make myself cry about how every time I create I lose a part of myself
It's interesting, I too thought of it more like "the art of basketball", as is in the skill or occurrence of losing in of itself. My initial interpretation was moreso over the idea of mastery itself, taking the idea of mastering something to its logical extreme. The things you lose become more and more extreme, and by the end you've lost everything after having gotten so good at it. I had thought the poem was challenging the idea of mastery. Similar to what you said, we might think of mastering something as an inherently productive act when mastery may be the very thing that destroys its master.
I guess I could further rant about, "well what _is_ productivity, what does _it mean_ to be productive", but that's a bit too far I think.
I on the other hand initially thought of the art (skill) of letting go of attachments/desires, like in Greek cynicism philosophy school or buddhism. And the poem is from someone who tries to practice that and taking it to its extreme and thus challenges the idea. So it escalates throughout poem. And the hardest to loose of all turns out to be the connection to another person. It's kinda close to the first interpretation in the vid, the difference being it's not about loss that happens to you, but intentionally trying to sever yourself from things.
I think it's pretty common among creators to feel loss when they "finish" their art, and even moreso when they make it public. I've always used the analogy of someone's art being like their child, and at some point they have to let it go out into the real world after which they have no real control over the thing they may have spent a considerable time creating and forming in a certain way.
Oh no he’s slowly becoming more and more like School of Life someone help him
the difference is that he isn't claiming this to be objectively true
(that and the snobby english accent, urgh)
(ETA: this is not to attack u, i did think ur comment was funny)
@@softdroid1655 I didn’t read it as an attack at all, I was just joking about how the combination of the illustrations and voiceover gives it the feel of one of those videos
@@skippykay599 all good, tone is hard to communicate over text so i wanted to be clear just to be safe 😅
"Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you." - SOL
he needs to keep releasing more and more subjective videos, slowly claiming more and more of them to be about objective fact. on 1. april 2021 he releases - The Necessary Trauma and Kitch of What We Should Eat on a Date
interesting interpretation. I read "the art of losing" as a metaphor for coping with change, and viewing it as a negative thing (like I struggle to do in life)
As someone who has dedicated his artistic life to poetry: nice pick and nice thoughts.
:-) cool video
cool art!
seconding both the cool video AND cool art! idk why but i love the angry bird at 4:33
This poem has a special place in my heart. It's the first poem I properly analysed for my English degree on my own, after a full semester spent trying to figure out what poetry even is and how to understand it.
I ended up writing my term paper about the use of meter in the poem (a topic I started out thinking I would never choose to address unprompted lol), and though it was a relatively short and surface level paper I'm still proud of it. Hearing you read the poem out loud, along with those super charming illustrations, made me really happy.
Just wanted you to know that you brought me some joy in these shitty times. Have a great day!
This is a great little piece of literary analysis. Why do I feel like I’ve never seen something like this on UA-cam?
omg I love this. I've read this poem before and it instantly hit me in a very literal way because I project my ADHD onto everything (I read it as: if you chronically lose everything, just embrace the constant process of that and have fun with it). But the deeper interpretation is beautiful and without this video I would have never seen it like that. ❤️ Thanks
You might want to read up on her life, and the early drafts of the poem. In my opinion it's quite literal, and crushing
@@alfalfa_artthank you for randomly responding to my 2yold comment to tell me to enrich my life with a deeper exploration of good art. The drafts were beautiful and your advice made my day :')
I feel like it’s written similarly to how Joel talks so I almost couldn’t tell when he was reading and when he was analyzing lol
I teared up a little at the end, at the idea that the poem itself was the 'you' she was losing. Dunno why that affected me
I always took that to mean the loss of the reader, which is why it affected me personally. It's as if to say that the speaker is acknowledging that the memory of this poem would be lost and forgotten in the mind of the person reading.
Is this a video about Cars 2
kinda
Yes?
everything is either thing A or non-thing A
I loved this change of pace and your insight on the topic. Thank you!
You have no idea how hard this poem hits me.
Where I live, objects occupy a big role in our lives. It isn't just presents or tools that you use once in a while, they're milestones, symbols of your relationships with your surroundings and the people you know. Loss is pretty hard to cope with around here. Whether it is small objects and items, a symbol, a landmark, heritage, a house, a culture, or a person.
I just come back to this from time to time when I feel like getting teary-eyed at some simply sincere and beautiful... stuff
There's definitely some intentional irony in her saying it "isn't hard to master" over and over -- its not hard to literally lose things, we do it all the time, its inevitable. But the poem itself is her convincing herself to accept these things, repeating her mantra. Even the cities, continents and people she loves will be lost easily when their moment comes, but handling it and convincing herself that its not (Write it!) a disaster, even when it seems like one. That final line feels to me like she's letting in just a little room to admit that loss is hard, can feel like disaster, that its ok to NOT be good at loss, while still reminding herself she will go on.
I love this poem! I read it for my Advanced Composition class this semester and thought it was absolutely beautiful. It's become my favorite villanelle.
I wish I could comprehend poetry, it seems like a lot of fun but when I try it feels like those magic eye patterns where I was convinced people were just pretending to see the dolphin
just read more of it! or find a poem and read and reread it. There's a lot of poetry out there that's really good and accessible.
This is by far my favorite poem all thanks to you. Ive lost a spouse, a family, a father, a dream job and so many possessions that i have loved. All in about a 2 years time. Ive been repeating this poem to my self ever since i first heard it. Thank you Joel 😊
Wow that was much better than I expected when clicking on this. Glad I didn't miss that vid.
I freaking love villanelles as a format. While Bishop hasn't been a favorite poet of mine, this reading gave me a more energized sense of this poem, so thank you!!
This shows me perfectly how I don't understand poems.
This is such an incredible poem and I think your reads on it are pretty cool and well-explained. Another fun piece of lore for this poem is that E Bishop was lifelong best friends with Robert Lowell. The story goes that he was the one who told her to add that last "write it." Just interesting to think about how that second voice impacted the poem when looking at your second interpretation of it. Something about the additive quality of a second voice opposed to the idea of loss.
Nice! I always like analysing poems and I thought this was a very interesting take :)
Trump: "The art of losing isn't hard to master"
*loses elections*
Trump: "The art of losing isn't TOO hard to master"
Someone delete this comment
lol well done
In fact some are saying I've mastered losing more than anyone else in history. Believe me, no one knows the art of losing like me. The Art of Losing. Folks, how about that, a new book title. The Art of Losing. No one loses like I do but the crooked media won't tell you that. *Rally Audience Cheering Rabidly*
P R A C T I C E L O S I N G E V E R Y D A Y
This is legit what I thought this vid would be about, going in. He really is the master of the art.
Is this loss?
| ||
|| |_
0 00
00 0o
how did i not see this comment coming?
I Ii
II I_
Oops I relived I did - instead of _ for the last bit. Fixed it.
I heard the word "villanelle" and went FERAL. I love this. Thank you for sharing this with all of us!
Holy shit - Big Joel are you moving in on 'School Of Life's territory?
lol
Survival of the fittest dictates that the creature most suited to a given niche will drive out the weaker competition and assert dominance in its place.
@@imveryangryitsnotbutter This might be the only social darwinist take I can appreciate
@@imveryangryitsnotbutter I chuckled :)
Big Joel on a mission to make Alain de Botton his bitch. 🤣
you read this poem so beautifully ! love how u always present an initial take that u then complicate and expand on to find a lot of meaning in whatever ur lookin at. epic vids king
heh, sounds like SOMEONE is 'losing it' >:))
...it's me, I'm losing it. this is very good
looking back on this I love how he explains this profound deeper meaning to this poem and then answers that mermaid question right after just like the juxtaposition between those two things is very much what I expect from a Joel video
Joel: "At least if we assume there is no god."
*PragerU triggered*
The art of losing I was thinking about when I read this would be the art of giving up, not fighting a lost battle, not searching for your keys for a whole week, not clinging to it, but just deciding you have lost - losing - when you still have time and energy left.
You can cling to a city you were in years ago - or you can lose it and accept it's gone, be sad, but go on with your life. The latter one is the healthy way, but it's not as easy to master as one makes it sound, especially with persons.
This is similar to coping with loss, I think, but not exactly the same
Notice how the author never called the Art of Losing “easy” just “not hard” - because it will never be “easy” to lose a friend or a sentimental item, and with the world as it is, it’s certainly not “hard” to lose either of those things
my favorite poem since forever, I' ve always wanted it written on my tombstone. now I'm crying over it because my brother died first. it's a relief to remember it at a moment like this, and no matter the interpretation (yours is brilliant here), it's a real diamond and needs to be shared.
THIS IS ALSO MY FAVOURITE POEM 😍
Words cannot express how much I love the illustrations
If losing is an art, consider me michelangelo
And me, Picasso
I really like how personal this video feels.
When you started reading the poem, I first started understanding it as in your second interpretation (especially because I'm someone who is constantly losing my stuff). However, I couldn't make sense of the end in that way, so I kind of moved towards your first interpretation, but I really like how you made sense of the end within your second interpretation, just don't know if I'd ever arrive to that on my own.
ah yes, lets see if i can perfect my craft
First time watching this beautiful little video two years after you dropped it. Thank you for bringing the poem and the great insight into my life.
When I saw the title i thought this was gonna be election commentary
It is, and it isn't :P
I interpret the "the art of letting go" as trying to hold onto things we love selfishly and control due to fear of loss...when we love something we want to hold it tight and shelter it so neither party gets lost or hurt, but when we choose to love anything, we develop the opportunity to lose that thing we love and be hurt by it...to gain true value from anything we love we must be willing to lose that love or be hurt by it rather than control or manipulate it and keep it all to yourself
The art of losing, otherwise known as loss.jpg
Is this art?
loss.png more like
Love how you just think through things that some might consider trivial. Great video.
I definitely thought you would be talking about the election here.
Today was the Electoral College vote - it's definitely tongue-in-cheek, but it'll age better without being explicit. It's also hilarious to view as being directly targeted at Trump, telling him to calm the fuck down and be a less sore loser, lol.
The art is so charming I'm so relaxed.
Hey... This is a School of Life video!
lol, in form only.
You were talking and I felt this poem was very much about grief and the sense of loss afterwards. And the process of remembering, living without parts of your life you loved. It fits a lot with my personal experience of grief, how long it took to forget, how I loss memories "accidentally on purpose" in time, how I now approach losing homes, continents or cities (moving, and a bit every major change in life): after the loss, everything was and is re-framed as losing, that is easy and difficult, accidental and on purpose, to do and to survive.
I don't know exactly how or why, but this poem fits perfectly with how I live having lost someone.
I interpreted it as someone having alzhemiers or something and losing their memories
Love mothcub's illustrations in this, really enjoyed watching the visuals paired with the poem and the video script!
Reading the poem myself in the description, it strikes me as a poem about Bishop putting to paper the way she’s come to cope with loss: her humor, her comedic point of view. And in the making of the poem, by putting it to paper, she’s admitting to herself that it’s not enough. In the final stanza, she’s, in essence, laid bare the very art she’s convinced herself she’s mastered, and now must lose that too-now must deal with loss without her humor, without her point of view where she could convince herself loss was something she had control of. If writing the poem makes her lose part of herself, writing the poem with ironic humor makes her lose the part of herself that wrote the previous stanzas. Now she’s relinquished her sense of control and must lose things without being able to compartmentalize them. Now they simply hurt.
Joel, this is my favorite poem, too! It has been since the first time I read it. Having dealt with a lot of loss in my life, it has always meant a lot to me. This sad, gentle, delicate poem that makes me feel less alone. ❤️
I walked away from this video thinking about Joel saying "Tons of balls"
This was so good. With this interpretation artists loose things all the time whereas non artists get to keep their "dignity" and judge all of those who put their work out to the public.
I always say art is just a product of someone who wanted to make art, and no amount of chin stroking will make it more complicated
I read this poem in AP lit in high school 7 whole ass years ago and I want to send this to my old English teacher because it’s so good
Wonder how many people clicked on the video titled "the art of losing" thinking it was gonna be some political essay about Trumps post-election melt down
I expected a political video. I was pleasantly surprised to find it wasn't one. I'm glad Trump is being forcibly schooled in the art of losing, though he is incapable of learning his lesson, but I was glad to see it was not a political video. 12 16 2020.
I liked this! Please make more poem videos when your heart yearns for it.
I assumed this was gonna be a trump hot take but i'm glad it wasn't
I could watch Big Joel analyse poetry with those beautiful drawings in the background for hours
The poem is literally just an adhd anthem lmao
Love this return to commentary on shit you just want to comment on. Thanks for showing me this poem, Big J.
I've been struggling with some personal loss, and I think this poem also speaks to the futility of "normalizing" grief and loss.
It's like the authour is attempting to over-simplify this 'one art' of acceptance and learning, but as the nature of her personal loss is explored, her mantra that "losing isn't hard to master" starts to show it's cracks.
To me, it's a beautiful statement on the universality of human experience while simultaneously acknowledging at an individual level that each loss can look like a disaster. There's no silver bullet for life.
Damn it Joel, I thought you were gonna talk about Trump. >: (
I really liked this poem because it frames loss as- not just an inevitable, painful part of life- but something of its own journey that can be honed and done differently, maybe even celebrated, if we choose to put in that work and don't shy from the pain of it. It speaks to the merits of distress tolerance and learning the place of loss in our lives, as opposed to the feverish determination of trying to avoid any kind of pain in any capacity, which just makes pain and loss and grief more unbearable. We aren't very good at grief nowadays.
Thanks for bringing this poem to your audience!
I was thinking in terms of aging, entropy, dementia, living the entirety of your life. Letting things go is part of a life with dignity.. as is letting go of one's own life eventually. Having to let go of _someone else_ totally changes that dynamic. Sad but beautiful way to contextualize loss, and I appreciate the analysis.
Great video Joel, and thanks to Mothcub for the animations. This is the first I've heard this poem, and I really enjoyed it.
This is my favorite Big Joel video. I have no idea but I come back and rewatch it like once a week it just hits me for some reason I just love it
I’m coming to the end of a big project I’ve been writing for almost a year, and I’m suddenly getting writers block and feeling really melancholy. I think this is exactly why, I don’t want to lose it
this is one of my favourite poems too :D I Always thought the poem was at the beginng about "losing" as an involontary action (as you said) but then it transitions to talking about "losing" more as "letting go". the art of losing is not so much learning to forget things along the way but to slowly stop being possessive about things and people and starting to understand that everything, from the door keys to the broken relationship, will some day pass and be lost.
That second interpretation resonates with something a professor used to say to us when I was in college, that we need to learn to let go of our art, or we will forever suffer. That studying the making of art requires one to learn to let go, because as long as we emotionally treat our art an extension of ourselves, we will be on the defensive, having a hard time coping with even the most tepid criticism.
easily one of my favorite poems, was shown it in school during our poetry unit in lit; fell in love with bishop’s work and this villanelle ever since. loved hearing other interpretations of it, also really enjoy the art!
I love all of your videos so much man. I watch them and rewatch them and they brighten my days. Thank you for what you do
I really enjoy both of these interpretations! They both are very insightful and make a lot of sense, and are both interesting to think about.
My initial interpretation of the poem was quite different from both, and I think that the contrast of mine reflects a lot on where I'm currently at in my life and mental state. When I first heard the poem, my mind didn't gravitate quite as much towards "the art of losing isn't hard," moreso what stuck with me was "it wasn't a disaster." Instead of the idea of "you" being lost making Bishop snap, I interpreted the ending as her acknowledging that in life, there will be things you lose that are harder to let go than a house or a beloved object or heirloom. There will be /people/ you love with all your heart that you will lose, people you don't feel that you can live without. It will make all the other losses in your life seem easy to deal with, no matter how hard it was in the moment. But, in the end, you will be able to heal. You will be able to find ways to live without them in time, even if it seems like disaster, like you'll never get better and that your world is over. The "write it" being said to make the reader tell themselves (through writing or speech or any other form of communication) that it /look/ like disaster, solidifying that it's not the end of everything.
Is this the intended reading of the poem? I'm fairly certain that it's not. Like I said earlier, I feel that this reading reflects more on myself than Bishop or the poem itself.
It's been over two years since I lost both my Grandpa, one of my closest friends, and the first real romantic love of my life all in the span of a month, the former to the inevitability of death, and the latter two to some... frankly extremely dumb personal shit that stemmed from some serious issues in our friendships with each other. It left me a complete and utter wreck, and the year following it was easily the worst of my life and was my first personal experience with severe depression. I dropped out of school due to falling grades, I stopped talking to really anybody besides my family, I stopped hiking and swimming even though they had always brought me joy on even my worst days before. I thought I'd never get better, that I'd never be able to live a life outside of the wreckage that had been made in that month.
In the end, that wasn't true. I'm doing much better now. I'm getting back into hiking (slowly, but I'm getting there), I'm going to be back in school next month, and I've made many new friends that I love dearly. I've found new interests and passions in place of the ones I lost to depression, and rekindled some old ones too.
It wasn't easy. I'd be lying if I said that it was.
But in the end, it wasn't a disaster, even though it looked like it. It wasn't the end.
Am I seriously oversharing on the internet over a video about a poem? ABSOLUTELY, I rarely even comment on UA-cam videos in the first place, let alone stuff like this. Just... something about this video and the poem struck a cord in me and I had to get my thoughts out somewhere, and I find it easier to write them down than to speak them. If you've read through up until now, thank you? For reading this nonsense?? FHGDHF... This comment was honestly written more for me than anything else, but I hope that you've gained something from reading this. I don't really know what that would be, but hey! Who knows?
I really like this interpretation. Indeed, losing people, whether through death or through the end of a relationship, is by far the hardest loss to deal with. I'm glad you're recovering from your loss, it seems to me that you really are mastering the art of losing.
this poem makes me cry every time ! thanks so much for making a video on this one.
I've loved this poem for years, but I really didn't grasp the concept of losing being an art until I experienced the worst loss of my life. I didn't really GET the meta idea of her finishing the poem as an intentional act of loss until I spent the last 3 months of my mom's life caring for her at her home and then a final week in hospice. Her death was far from the intended outcome, but the process of caring for her and watching over her until the end is something that will stay with me forever. It was the completion of our relationship. I can read it again as many times as I'd like in my memories, but I can't change anything or add anything new. I lost her in August, and I'm finding new things every day that I have to intentionally push through or else I'll collapse into a puddle of sadness in the middle of the grocery store. This is an amazing poem. Thank you Joel.
your heart yearnings bringg me momentary peace.
This was a painful poem to go through and analyze. That is not to say it wasn't beautiful in its own way, merely that I'm broken down in tears as I type this.