The Art of Losing: Poems on Love and Loss

In her famous villanelle, "One Art," Elizabeth Bishop describes a series of losses, from "door keys" and "the hour badly spent" to houses, cities, and even a significant loved one who is now gone. Her piece is an eloquent example of how poetry can be a means of exploring the intertwined experiences of love and loss. Poetry is one way we can speak about the ongoing presence of what is now absent. In this one-day seminar, we will look at how poems can reflect love and loss, whether that is the loss of a person, a place, or another part of our lives. We will be discussing contemporary examples of this theme, including Donald Justice's "Men at Forty," which looks back at a man's lost younger years, and W.S. Merwin's "For A Coming Extinction," a poem that laments the potential future loss of an entire species. We will spend some of our time together reading and discussing the work of other writers, and we will also look at poems shared by members of the class.

About the Instructor:

Margaret Mackinnon is the author of two collections of poetry, The Invented Child (Silverfish Review Press 2013), winner of the 2014 Literary Award in Poetry from the Library of Virginia, and Afternoon in Cartago(Ashland Poetry Press 2022), winner of the Richard Snyder Memorial Publication Prize. Her work has appeared in The Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review, Image, Poetry, Blackbird, and other journals. She attended Vassar College and the University of North Carolina, and she received her MFA in poetry from the University of Florida. She lives with her family in Richmond.