Close Reading Essay One Art
Nastasia Schreiner
Megan Fernandes
ENGL 234: Poetry
February 4th, 2015
Close Reading of One Art by Elizabeth Bishop
In Elizabeth Bishop’s poem, “One Art”, the speaker uses repetition to stress the change of her feelings about loss after she loses someone she really cares about, creates symbolism through material objects to show increasingly greater loss throughout her life, and uses a satirical tone and voice to portray her struggle managing loss.
In Bishop’s villanelle, she follows the traditional form by systematically using repetition at the end of each tercet. The two repeating lines are, “The art of losing isn’t hard to master”, and a variation of lines using “no disaster”, “none of these will bring disaster” or “but it wasn’t a disaster”. The speaker chose these lines because she is constantly reminding herself that she has lost many things in her life, however, it was not a disaster and she overcame it. She wishes to show that loss is a normal event that happens regularly and that does not affect us in a significant way by saying that losing something isn’t infrequent and isn’t hard to accept. At first, the speaker is just reminding herself of all the things she has lost, but in the end, it is as if she is constantly repeating that it was not a disaster or it happens to everyone because she is trying to convince herself that she does not care and that she can get over the person that she lost as easily as she got over her keys or her mother’s watch. This is a sort of coping mechanism the speaker is using. The speaker also uses material objects she lost as symbols or milestones of her life. She starts off with the first things she ever lost, small things that are not so significant, like an hour badly spent. She does this to make the poem seem more casual, and to make herself appear like she is unconcerned about loss. However, the poem escalates and the speaker begins to mention more important objects, like houses, cities, and continents. But even
Megan Fernandes
ENGL 234: Poetry
February 4th, 2015
Close Reading of One Art by Elizabeth Bishop
In Elizabeth Bishop’s poem, “One Art”, the speaker uses repetition to stress the change of her feelings about loss after she loses someone she really cares about, creates symbolism through material objects to show increasingly greater loss throughout her life, and uses a satirical tone and voice to portray her struggle managing loss.
In Bishop’s villanelle, she follows the traditional form by systematically using repetition at the end of each tercet. The two repeating lines are, “The art of losing isn’t hard to master”, and a variation of lines using “no disaster”, “none of these will bring disaster” or “but it wasn’t a disaster”. The speaker chose these lines because she is constantly reminding herself that she has lost many things in her life, however, it was not a disaster and she overcame it. She wishes to show that loss is a normal event that happens regularly and that does not affect us in a significant way by saying that losing something isn’t infrequent and isn’t hard to accept. At first, the speaker is just reminding herself of all the things she has lost, but in the end, it is as if she is constantly repeating that it was not a disaster or it happens to everyone because she is trying to convince herself that she does not care and that she can get over the person that she lost as easily as she got over her keys or her mother’s watch. This is a sort of coping mechanism the speaker is using. The speaker also uses material objects she lost as symbols or milestones of her life. She starts off with the first things she ever lost, small things that are not so significant, like an hour badly spent. She does this to make the poem seem more casual, and to make herself appear like she is unconcerned about loss. However, the poem escalates and the speaker begins to mention more important objects, like houses, cities, and continents. But even