Thanks to everyone who voted for me in the Weblog Awards for Best Literature. If fourth place can be lost, I lost it by one vote. All day the admittedly modest tally swung back and forth between Diary of a Heretic and Arts and Letters Daily. When the bell rung, Arts and Letters had bested me.
I love the Weblog Awards. They’re fun. I discover new and wonderful blogs. And going by the numbers, it looks as if readers who haven’t read my blog before—and may not read fiction blogs at all—have at least stopped by: that’s something.
Now I can get back to practicing “the art of losing.” It seems a fitting cap for Best Literature.
“One Art”
By Elizabeth Bishop
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.
