Essay
Close reading of the poem One Art by Elizabeth Bishop
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An assignment from the poetry module of English literature at Brighton University. Analysing One Art by Elizabeth Bishop using quotes and context.
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One Art by Elizabeth Bishop is a poem about loss. It is in the form of a villanelle and so consists of fivetercets and a quatrain. It has a flowing spoken rhythm in a loose iambic pentameter with every first line
rhyming with every third. Bishop does not waste any time getting to the central theme of the poem by
using the sucker-punch of a first line: “The art of losing isn’t hard to master;”. This line presents the idea
of ‘losing’ as something to practice and learn; that the more someone loses, the better they get at it. It
suggests that the speaker is someone well versed in the art of loss and someone who has already
experienced a great amount of it, so much as to ‘master’ it. Bishop follows this opening with “so many
things seem filled by the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster.” This has a casual tone to it,
offering that loss is just a part of life. This is the first instance of enjambment in One Art though Bishop
uses it often to create a rhythmic flow. In this case, the enjambment helps contribute to the casual tone.
If there was punctuation at the of the second line the flow would be lost and creates an impactful
storytelling with contrast to a more emotional tone later in the poem.
The second tercet continues with the casual tone Bishop has set up. It uses the imagery of searching for
lost door keys as a relatively inconsequential loss. It says, “Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.” Then, as fitting to the form of a villanelle, the first line of the
first stanza is repeated as the closing line in this stanza: “The art of losing isn’t hard to master.” This
repetition reads like a mantra: it gives the feeling of the speaker repeating this to themselves in hopes of
convincing its truth. It also reinforces its own idea, as practice must occur in order to master an art, and
by repeating the line, practice is occurring.
In the third stanza, Bishop begins to bring in more substantial losses and more emotion in connection to
those losses. It reads: “Then practice losing farther, losing faster:” In the path of mastering loss, you
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