A poem is a machine like a living creature’s body. Its parts collude to get its point across. Where a body has sound, gesture, motion, tension, pulse, a poem has sound, meanings, shape, repetitions, pulse. Bodies often make themselves understood (I am thinking of dog-pal Henry here) with astonishing clarity; poems only occasionally. Most poems, even by gifted poets, lie inert as dirt on the page. We may comprehend, but not feel, what they’re saying. Prose can convey its message “in other words.” For a poem there are no other words. Either its parts collude – bingo! – or they don’t.

An effective poem strikes us with wonder. How did the poet manage it! Ponder the nursery rhyme

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedEeny, meeny, miny, mo,Catch a tiger by the toe,If he hollers let him go,Eeny, meeny, miny, mo.

(There are many variations in various languages, some blood-curdling.) Welcome those syllables into your brain and (like a bedtime mosquito) you can’t evict them. The ditty seems to mean something but what? Drives you nuts.

Elizabeth Bishop’s “One Art” (reprinted below) is a crazily, even infuriatingly effective poem. Its diction’s as ho-hum as a beat-up shoe. The poet sounds like she’s shrugging, bored. The rhymes and repetitions, albeit rigorous, sound by-the-way, inadvertent. We almost don’t notice its traditional, somewhat arty form, as if it became a villanelle by accident.

The poet is an old hand at losing stuff. Everything gets lost sooner or later, why fuss. Keys, chances, names, mom’s watch, memories, your whole stupid life, come to think of it, swirls down the drain eventually, no big deal. Whenever somebody characterizes a disappointment as no big deal, suspect the opposite; they likely mean it’s too big a deal to deal with.

The poet escalates her scale of losses from mundane objects to words to mementoes to your whole frigging life, come to think of it, who gives a damn. It dawns on us gradually that this bored, indifferent, somewhat jaunty attitude masks an excruciating despair. When our poet says “the art of losing isn’t hard to master,” she means the opposite. It’s hard as hell, this “art” – especially when it comes to losing you, the one I love, whose jests and gestures made me smile – impossible, really, to persist without you – impossible! – yet I must, mustn’t I? – cope – but how?!!! By writing – an intricate villanelle, say – the rigid demands of which, like a Sunday crossword, remove one’s attention from one’s woes. The art of losing and the art of writing turn out to be, as the poem’s title anticipates, “One Art” – both unimportant in the “grand scheme of things” – and all-important in one’s personal adventure.

Beneath this poem’s seemingly simple surface – with whole lines repeated, as if the poet’s too bored to make up new ones – roils a gigantic grief – which we recognize – so like our own – a grief too crucifying to confess – which we shrug off, lest we crumple under its weight.

I described a poem as a machine – which it is – each element a gear, the function of which one might analyze – here every syllable oiled and taut. But what animates the machine is a throbbing heart. Yes, this poem is clever – a villanelle! – but for good reason: not to flaunt bravura skill – but, by focusing on making, to distract the maker from a heart that’s breaking.

Herein the wizardry of poetry when it succeeds: the intensification of an instant to a vividness we can hardly endure. Bravely the poet has invited us into her pain, and though we may holler, she will not let us go.

Eeny, meeny, miny, mo.

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Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedOne Art

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;so many things seem filled with the intentto be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the flusterof 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 meantto travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, ornext-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 gestureI love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evidentthe art of losing’s not too hard to masterthough it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.