Summary Of Lost By Tom Wayman

. The poet offers a primer for the mastery of disaster, couched in the Puritan form of

the sermon to others for their moral improvement.

Mindful always of the common auditor, Bishop forces the second stanza to visualize with

the philosophical ruminations of the first. Readers learn precisely how to master this

art, and are urged to practice, to make it into a virtuous habit: "Lose something

every day." A further injunction counsels the reception and approval of that

resulting disorder the "fluster"produced by haste, undue agitation.

Loss, art, master, disasterthe lofty conceptual diction of the first stanza crumbles

in the mockery of this near rhyme. The "lost door keys, the hour badly spent"

become concrete entities and

Bishop enforces a progressively dynamic, almost uncontrollable, schedule of loss in the

third stanza. Then simply shifts the focus to the next lesson. No longer does the

homilist tally manageable, sympathetic incidents; the poem has moved beyond them to over-

whelming concerns: places, names, and destinations. Each reader must supply concrete

examples. The "intent" of the first stanza blossoms into the broader intentions

of "where it was you meant / to travel" of the third stanza. Bishop continues to

induce specific details from the reader as the pace and range grow. Soon drained of

places, names, and travel plans, the reader must struggle to fill the lists. The muted

refrain rings hollow as these clustered categories of loss and faster/disaster

cacophonize.

After the impersonal professorial tone, the abrupt introduction of the lyric I requires

immediate reappraisal of all that comes before this stanza. The homilist's experiential

knowledge, suppressed in the first half of the poem, surfaces as the teacher has obviously

experienced frustration in the auditor's ability to comprehend these lessons of loss.

Bishop draws to the heart of the matter and summons the ultimate parting gift,

Looking beyond autobiography to the truth of this loss, however, Bishop

exploits what is, after all, only one more "minor family relic."

The exemplum confounds conventional ideas of the subjective and objective, and

demonstrates that loss is grave and universal, but too conventional to be deeply personal.

She defers the threat of sentiment by the sweeping rhetorical gesture of "And

look!" Her life, no longer a chaos of events, seems orderly and safe as Bishop

inventories and schedules her losses: "my last, or / next-to-last, of three loved

houses went." Her autobiography assumes an oddly reassuring linearity and

predictability as the poem hurtles toward its closure. In spite of approximate

knowledge"my last, or next- to-last"the end is palpable by its very

proximity.

This registry of loss proceeds to the missing "three loved houses." Even that

great modifier loved cannot convert these houses into homes. In spite of the wisdom

of Bishop's crusade "Home-made, home-made! But aren't we all?" (

"Crusoe in England") the expatriot narrating this poem remains homeless.

The narrator, further emboldened by self-knowledge, begins again with