This week a candidate competing in the Republican presidential primary suspended his campaign. Another continues to label his opponents ‘losers’. In the noise of our success driven culture we have lost respect for the fine art of losing. The Friday Poem this week is from American poet, Elizabeth Bishop, who reminds us that we all “Lose something every day.” 

Being a loser is not a bad thing, it’s a human thing.

One Art

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.

Elizabeth Bishop   ‘The Complete Poems 1926-1979’