Bishop is still exploring in these drafts
The art of losing not so hard to master:
so many things seem really to be meant
As Bishop earlier pared master/disaster opposites in union, so she does again with "seem" and "really." The first confirms appearance, the latter expresses actuality. Also the phrase "to be meant" gives will or intention to the inanimate, or perhaps the person or thing that lost them had designs.
Start slowly will you, keep, a face, a gesture
Once again, we enter recipe territory with the first two. But we gain the speaker in the second two "will you" as if the "you" is in a hurry to lose things and the speaker is trying to slow the person down. This could also be the speaker addressing itself.
With extra commas, it isn't clear what she means by "keep." It may be an accident, a path she intended to head down, or a way of keeping something in play, maximizing possibilities she may put the word to use. It appears that she might be trying to introduce the lost loved one early, advising the listener to keep the things that memory is losing "a face, a gesture"
Stood with your glasses
Reading-glasses, car–keys, you can master
easy things.
Here Bishop again reaches for the casual tone, returns to the simple, the easy, the natural. The images, all common. She seems to want the opening to feel as as normal or universal as possible.
Look! I myself have lost or
next to last, at least, houses and
Although this part occurs later than the next, it repeats some of what I said. The common parlance of "Look!" and "I myself have," trying to ally the reader in her cause, empathizing. The following phrases would seem at first glance to be stutterings, unsure where to go but maybe the where is dependent largely on the connecting phrases, so she is trying each one on as different garments before a mirror. What she wears may dictate where she goes next. Although it seems she has been working with the same general concept, she is still keeping her options open.
The practice brings losses, lose them faster,
forget the faster-money, home, intent,
the mastered art of losing’s no disaster.
"The practice" makes this a game we're preparing for, a clinical occupation, a way to prepare, a way to master. She likes "practice" well enough to try it again in the next draft but without finishing the phrase, hoping it would come to her later (most of the next "draft" is a sketching of the end word of the poem): "Practicing my... / and possibly will end disaster." As you can see, she dwells in possibilities, doesn't nail things down.
She flips "lose them faster" on its head. She wonder if she or the reader should "forget the faster." Considering Bishop's penchant for erasing or honing as she writes, these become the reader, the writer and the poem become one and the same. What may be a note to herself may just as well become a line of the poem. It's almost as if she brings the reader into the making of the work.
