One Art - Elizabeth Bishop free essay sample

To Love, is to Lose The most prominent quality of Elizabeth Bishop’s, â€Å"One Art,† remains the concise organization and rhyme scheme of the poem, which amazingly keeps the audience informed at all times what the theme. Her choice of a villanelle constantly reminds the audience that â€Å"the art of losing† always seem easy until one loses something so much more than an inanimate object and at the point, it does become a â€Å"disaster. † Written in 1976, the poem is very modern and uses an impeccable rhyme scheme, diction, and imagery to convey the hints of misery and frantic the speaker feels. In the opening of the poem, the speaker immediately begins to ponder about â€Å"the art of losing. † By writing â€Å"the art of losing isn’t hard to master,† she sets the mood of her piece as somewhat of a recollection of how un-difficult it is to lose something (1). Though by repeating it in lines 6 and 12, she puts emphasis on the words and seems to want that line to be the truth. We will write a custom essay sample on One Art Elizabeth Bishop or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page The speaker then lists items in each stanza that she has once lost and that it wasn’t something of significance to care so much. The speaker continues with how the process of losing something just takes â€Å"practice† (7) and again, it â€Å"won’t be a disaster† (9). While she seems nonchalant that losing items and â€Å"none of these will bring disaster (9), it is clear that by the end of line 16, there is a particular person that she seems to have a tough time losing. The speaker writes, â€Å"Even losing you (the joking voice a gesture / I love, I shan’t lie it’s evident,† (16-17) as if writing to someone particular in a sarcastic and fake humorous way—showing a side that seems a little more vulnerable than the rest of the poem. By the end of the poem, the speaker’s diction illustrates some sort of pain and she concludes with a lone, â€Å"though it may look like (Write it! ) disaster† (19)—as she forces herself to write the last line subconsciously. After reading this, it is as if the entire were a facade and that her confident advice that losing something is bearable is a way for her to cope with a significant loss. In the first stanza of the poem, the speaker puts significant emphasis on the words â€Å"master† and â€Å"disaster. Throughout the entire poem, these two words are repeated and seem to work as a key to unity in all her thoughts. Her diction is strong, confident, and unweathering. In the second stanza, the speaker introduces the first item that isn’t difficult to lose and reminds readers of the daily life hassles of finding lost keys. This is the first example of something in life that is easily lost for her. She further backs it up her original statement by saying that their intent is â€Å"to be lost† (3), saying that things are meant to be lost, no matter what happens. She instructs the audience to â€Å"lose† and â€Å"accept† (4), which suggests that she has gone through loss before and it would be better to accept losing things since it would not hurt as much. She then instructs the audience to â€Å"practice† (7) losing, so her heart will not be crushed when the audience is accustomed to losing. By line 6, the speaker gets frantic. Her words become careless and the words take a sort of rhythm. She says â€Å"losing farther, losing faster†. The alliteration in this line emphasizes how much and how fast she has lost that it is in a place so unreachable at this point. She then loses â€Å"places, and names, and where it was [she] meant / to travel† (8-9). She lost more important things, but they were bearable. In the fourth stanza, the speaker begins to explain more items that have been lost and it apparent that the more she writes, the more she is becoming less nonchalant and more frantic. When she says â€Å"And look! My last, or / next-to-last† (10), the exclamation point indicates a careless abandon. The fact that she can’t point out any details of the item she lost shows she doesn’t care about it and it doesn’t matter. She starts using the first person, saying that the items she lost were hers. She had begun with losing small things like â€Å"lost door keys, the hour badly spent†. Then she lost her â€Å"mother’s watch† and then â€Å"three loved houses†, but still she was able to bear with it. She lost â€Å"two cities†, â€Å"some realms [she] owned, two rivers, a continent† (line 13-14) but it didn’t matter to her. The things she lost were worth nothing to her and were easily disposable. But there is one thing that she can’t seem to get over losing. The last stanza, which is where the shift takes place, reflects the hidden pain that the speaker has tried to hide all along. Her nonchalant attitude of loss was only a way for her to cope with the significant loss in her life. Not only does she revert to speaking in first person, it is evident that there is one person that she is dedicating the entire poem to. She admits she â€Å"shan’t have lied† when saying losing things is easy because she found the one thing that hurts to lose: â€Å"you†. Here is where her audience changes to her lover. She still loves him; he uses the present tense word â€Å"love†. She hasn’t gotten over it. Looking back, she seems to be losing things to cope with the loss she has suffered. She thought if she lost some things, she might get used to the feeling of loss and accept his loss. Her use of parenthesis seems like a tool to incorporate humor to lighten up the tone and show readers what she is thinking inside her own mind. At this point, her diction isn’t as clean and organized as the rest of the stanzas. Her rhyme scheme in this doesn’t fit perfect as it did previously. Her tone is a lot more sarcastic in this last stanza. Clearly, her message to the audience is clear: the only way to overcome something painful is to make sure you can pretend that everything is not painful. Elizabeth Bishop’s, â€Å"One Art,† was written as a villanelle with 19 lines. The rhyme scheme she chose to write in was ABAB. Her choice of words for repetition in each stanza were, â€Å"master† and â€Å"disaster,† which puts a negative outcast throughout the entirety of the poem. Her choice in form certainly complements her tragic theme. These two words, repeatedly used, tie in how much it is hard to lose someone that you care about. The form usually seems constricted because the writer is forced to continually use the same lines but it only enhanced her forced facade and desire to keep order so that she would not break down. This poem was written in 1976 and certain demonstrates a more modern language and it easy to understand. To understand â€Å"One Art,† the audience needs to know how much the speaker wants to believe that losing something is simple and easy. But, it is not. Her order of choice in losing things starts from easy to complex—from a pair of keys to the person you love. Yes, it may not be â€Å"hard to master,† but it does cause â€Å"a disaster† in some cases. Bishop portrays the conflict or struggle that many people in society go through on a day-to-day basis. People lose things at every second in the day and people feel such tremendous heartache. Although she never blatantly admits that she struggles to forget the utter loss she feels, the audience can see (especially in the last stanza) that it’s never easy for her and she has to demand herself to finish a poem. This poem reflects sympathy for those who need it.