The Art of Losing Part 1

For Christmas 2012, I received this wonderful book:

From the silly to the philosophical, it provides a plethora of writing prompts for days when you’re just staring in front of a blank page, fighting writer’s block. Fight no more, and write about the fighting instead:

I find the shortest prompts the most thought-provoking.

How can I write about this when someone else wrote about it so well already?

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.

“She Left” by Leonid Afremov

Read Part 2 over here.