Loss In One Art

There are many types of art. Music, painting, photography, and dancing are examples, but they just scratch the surface. An art is “a skill acquired by experience, study, or observation” (Art). This means that anything can be an art, and the author displays this concept throughout her poem. Some could say that because Elizabeth Bishop titled her poem “One Art,” she is referring to a single type of art, but the reader can find three varieties interwoven in the poem. The poem displays the arts of losing, coping with loss, and expressing that loss through writing. The first line of the poem states, “The art of losing isn’t hard to master” (1). This clearly distinguishes the first art as losing. The poem states, “Then practice losing farther, losing
faster: / Places, and names, and where it was you meant / to travel” (7-9). Bishop goes on to list examples of losing things throughout the poem. She describes it as something that one must practice periodically like one might practice a musical instrument. Lines one, six, twelve, and eighteen indicate that she herself is a master of the art of losing. As Bishop lists different ways to practice the art of losing, she also discusses coping with loss. The poem states, “Accept the fluster / of lost door keys, the hour badly spent” (4-5). She writes that one must accept the loss, for it is not detrimental to one’s wellbeing. Throughout the poem she has the mindset that coping with loss is just as easy as losing in the first place. Diehl writes, “‘One Art’ presents a series of losses as if to reassure both its author and its reader that control is possible…”(499). One can control the pain of loss and can overcome it. The pain is bearable, and one can live with losing almost anything. When she describes losing rivers and a continent, she writes, “I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster” (15). She feels that losing is simple, and it is hard at first, but ultimately one will get over it. It is not a tragedy. She equates losing a continent to losing door keys just as she equates the ease of mastering the art of losing and the art of coping. Although Bishop suggests that she is a master of the arts of losing and coping with loss, expressing that loss through verse seems to be more of a struggle for her.
Diehl writes that the title “conveys the implicit suggestion that mastery sought over loss in love is closely related to poetic control” (498). Bishop expresses her loss quite nonchalantly throughout the poem until the end. She seems to be indifferent to losing and comes across as unaffected by the subject. However, in the last stanza she breaks the façade and lets some of the despair show through her writing. She writes, “It’s evident / the art of losing’s not hard to master / through it may look like (Write it!) like disaster” (17-190. She expresses great difficulty conveying the message, particularly in the last line. McCabe writes, “The imperative self-prompt ‘(Write it!)’ conveys the immense energy needed to utter the last word of ‘disaster’” (503). She strains to finish the poem. This contradicts all that she written about the ease of loss. This tells the reader that she is not indifferent to loss; she feels it just as much as anyone. All of the loss essentially did have an effect on the author, and that losing in this instance was actually a
disaster. Bishop writes about loss as if it is something that she is very familiar with, and she compares it to art. Art can be displayed in different forms. In this case, the arts were skills: the skill of losing, the skill of coping with that loss, and the skill of expressing that loss by poetic means. She claimed that she was a master of some of these skills, but the contradicted that claim in the last line. Although she might not be a master of these skills, she, like everyone, is an artist none the less.