I have been re-reading poems from E. Bishop's "Collected Poems" to soothe myself to sleep. In fact as I wrote a friend earlier this week, the refrain from her perfectly chiselled villanelle "One Art" which goes -

"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."

• is in a way the mantra for me to chant as I stumble towards a clear space, like the one that can be discerned in the gaps between breaths.

So I was happy to find another Bishop's poem 'Apartment in Leme', sent out by a poetry mailing list, in my email earlier this morning. This poem is supposed to be a draft, or a fragment, or an unfinished work that she didn't consider worthy of pulblishing, and comes from her recently released book, Edgar Allan Poe and the Jukebox (the link points to a review of the book in TLS).

It is no wonder that Bishop is considered an essential poet to write poetry in the last fifty years, even though her all of her "Collected Poems", i.e., poems she allowed into print are some 200 odd in number, when she could find flaws in such a beautiful poem as the 'Apartment' (which I am guessing is set in Brazil like a number of her lovely poems) with has lovely lines such as:

"Breathe in. Breathe out. We're so accustomed to those sounds we only hear them in the night. Then they come closer

but you keep your distance."

And this is as good as a reminder to me for today to breathe in, and breathe out.

in your mail box too grandpa?