Poetry One Art Analysis

One Art

This poem trains to develop the spirit of resignation on the loss of persons, places and things however valuable they may be. It arouses casual relationship with the material things failing which people usually get abnormal on the loss of their cherished objects. You can see the example of the poetess' mother who had been mentally retarted and spent her life in asylum. The poem is simple but the message is everlasting. Look with Muslims, they are religiously bound to say Inna Lillahe Wa Inna Eleihe Rajeoon (Everything is for Allah and we have to retire to Him in the end). This makes them face loss of anything in an acceptable way and hence they don't face set back of any mental disorder even in the state sheer loss. In this way, we can rightly say that Elizabeth's views about the art of losing to master are benovelent to the manking and they bear permanant value in all the ages.
The number of syllables follows a fixed structure of 11-10-11 in the first 3 stanzas, however, as the poem progresses and the rhythm accelerates due to the heightened speed and wave of emotions that are starting to overcome her rationality, the number of syllables start to vary and fluctuate indirectly. The increase in caesuras as the poem reaches the quatrain also shows her interrupted thoughts and pauses in speech (due to the outburst of feelings she can no longer contain). The punctuations also produce a staccato effect to speed up and quicken the rhythm and pace of the poem. Reflects her inner feelings and how she feels a greater sense of disorder as she continues penning down her thoughts. The interjectionary imperatives/orders such as "write it!" And "look!" Shows how bishop wants to control the readers as she is unable to control death. Therefore, the ostensible nonchalance which she portrays at the start of the poem slowly unwraps itself and reveal it's nature as a facade - she is terribly affected by the
This is what I thought Elizabeth is trying to portray through this poem. Of course nobody would ever want to embrace something negative.. such as losing something. Car keys, names, etc. are all just small losses.. She keeps convincing herself that these losses are not a bad thing, but something to master; Something that you can eventually accept and brush off as though the lost item or name is not a big deal. The items lost throughout the poem get bigger and more important. She continues to brush the losses off as a lesson learned.. As though it's really not that big of a deal because the items being lost really don't have all that much importance to her. Near the end, she loses an entire continent and still brushes it off; it's still not a disaster. It's when she loses what seems to be a person very dear to her, that we see a variant form within the poem. She is trying to convince herself that losing this person is not a big deal by justifying all of her other losses. But she still cannot brush off this loss of someone that she thinks she loved/loves. It is not ok to lose EVERYTHING and she does really does miss the person that she lost. I think that in this poem Elizabeth Bishop is communicating her feelings about loss by saying that in many senses, it is easier not to care when things get lost (as things so often do) and teach herself the art of being nonchalent and accepting loss as no great disaster. I think that the poet goes on to express how after being good at losing small things she loses more significant objects or memories and still she does not care because she had numbed herself to the pain which is usually felt when one loses something important to themselves or loved ones. I think that she has worked hard to stop caring about what she has lost in preperation for the loss of something fundemental but in the end when she loses a loved one she feels the pain and misses that person but doesn't allow herself to admit it.

This poem is both meaningful and is able to simply relate to today. Losing or loss is something that people are faced with daily. Whether its "door keys' or "the hour badly spent" is is all loss. She focuses on the fact that things are often lost and it isnt hard to master. In this why she shows her lack of care or concern. In the end, she says she has lost a continent and although is is a tremendous loss, it isn't a disaster. She soon finds that the loss of a loved one is a lot harder to cope with than the loss of various objects or even a continent. Loss is something that can be mastered but this type of loss is one that has to be delt with. Yes, this poem is a villanelle. The villanelle is a form of poetry governed by its strict form (which does include the tendancy to repeat lines). The lines are repeated over and over to reinforce the point, gaining a deeper understanding through the poems repetition. The rhyme scheme of the villanelle is not at all wierd. It is a traditional aba scheme. What seems wierd are the different kinds of rhymes that are present within the poem, and yes, there is more than just one type of rhyme