Elizabeth Bishop - One Art

In reading the first part of this poem, I thought it was only about how everyone loses things and that loss is a part of the everyday life of human beings. Reading on, the things Bishop started losing became heavier and less common. A normal person might be a little angry about losing two lovely cities, two rivers, and a whole continent, but Bishop clearly continues to say "but it wasn't a disaster" telling the reader that it's not that bad. The final stanza made things clear though, this poem was a dedication to someone very important in her life that she lost. She manages to still relay the message that even though things may seem unbearable, it's not a total disaster. Through the first four stanzas, there is a back and forth flow between stanzas. The first and third stanza end in talking about how loss is no disaster, while the second and fourth say "the art of losing isn't hard to master". The second and fourth stanzas end this way because they talk about different things that the author has lost while the first and third paragraphs are more general toward loss. In the third paragraph, I pictured something very strange while reading. I thought Bishop was speaking about Alzheimer's disease where a person's memory deteriorates. She said "losing farther, losing faster: places, and names, and where it was you meant to travel." This instantly made me think of Alzheimer's because those are exactly the symptoms my grandmother experienced. In a sense, the art of losing isn't hard to master in the case of Alzheimer's because it isn't controlled at all by the person. The final stanza is very different from the rest of the poem. Bishop uses the second person in addressing the person she lost. She also gives a command, "Write it!", in between the final line. I am unsure of the meaning of the command, but it does connect with the sentence by sounding similar to its surrounding words.