Creative Process / Elizabeth Bishop, poet and artist

I attended a webinar today on the creative process. As part of it, the presenter, Brad Kessler, included some images of Proust's and Elizabeth Bishop's first drafts of Remembrance of Things Past and "One Art":

He also talked about kintsugi and wabi-sabi; pentimento; walking in the wilderness; Michelangelo's non-finitos; Tibetan mandala sand paintings; and the artists Mark Rothko, Frida Kahlo, and Albert Pinkham Ryder. Among other things. Including a rock tumbler as the perfect metaphor for the creative process: take raw material—a piece of malachite, say; add grit, time, intention, wildness, energy, intention. Put them in the tumbler and turn it on. And you end up with a crafted piece. Most of the presentation centered on imagery (the Rothko sequence of paintings was mind-boggling: such variety, until he finally shed enough skins to find his signature mode of expression), but I enjoyed seeing, again (I keep encountering her, it, lately), Bishop's struggle with her now-iconic poem, or ars lachrymosa. Here is the final product:

One Art

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.

And she also did watercolors. Here are a few:

Cabin with Porthole

County Courthouse

Interior with Extension Cord

Tombstone for Sale

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Today in Monterey County, 17,926 confirmed cases of Covid-19, 127 current hospitalizations, 158 deaths—up, respectively, 547, 8, and 5 since the day before yesterday. This evening I heard that the daughter and son-in-law of a friend I was going to meet tomorrow for a walk have come down with the virus. My niece and great-nephew are still down with it, though I hope recovering (I haven't had news lately). No one in my immediate small circle of loved ones has died, thank goodness. But I know plenty of people who cannot say the same thing. I'm glad the vaccine is on the way, even if I'm not optimistic that I'll get one anytime soon. But still: normal life may be on the distant horizon.

Stay safe. Please.