One Art

Just got a phone call from an old friend of mine. He was looking for the author and title of a poem I'd sent him some time ago, something to do with losing. I knew immediately what poem it was: Elizabeth Bishop's "One Art." Bishop's one of my favourite poets and this is, of course, one of her great poems--not to mention one of the only villanelles in English that transcends the trickiness--even triviality--of its form. Small wonder that both it and Dylan Thomas' "Do Not Go Gentle" are both poems of intense personal grief.

AUDIO of me reading "One Art."