One Art Essay

A villanelle poem is a nineteen line poem that consists of five, three-line stanza followed by a quatrain. Bishop’s poem brings a fascinating irony between different levels of losses. Between each stanza, the development of trivial losses escalates into a bigger and traumatic loss that was unprepared for. An intense repetition of the phrase â€Å"the art of losing isn’t hard to master† suggests a few given things (Bishop 1499). She attempts to bring out the fact that â€Å"losing† is a type of skill that you can gain by overcoming. Therefore, by mastering it, you have the ultimate control. Throughout the poem, the phrase â€Å"art of losing† has been used to emphasize the speaker’s effect on how â€Å"it isn’t hard to master,† which suggests â€Å" that the speaker is trying to convince herself that losing things is not hard and she should not worry† (â€Å"Essay Interpreting â€Å"one Art† By Elizabeth Bishop† Page 1 of 2). In fact, the â€Å"art of losing† takes an increasingly significant role all throughout the poem. Each stanza represents what she loss and the level of the loss. †Language and verse form show in â€Å"One Art† how the losses increase in importance as the poem progresses, with the losses in lines 1-15 being mostly trivial or not very important to the great loss in lines 16-19 or a beloved person† (Page 2 of 2). From the beginning of the poem, her losses began to be trivial such as â€Å"lost door keys, the hourly bad spent† (Bishop 1499). Bishop used â€Å"second person. â€Å"Lose something every day. † seems to command one to practice the art of losing things† (Page 1 of 2). Towards the last three stanzas, the second person point of view was shifted to first person point of view after a few references to herself using the subject â€Å"I. † Bishop also suggests how you can practice to perform this type of art by using illustrations of progressive losses from trivial to more significant losses throughout the poem. â€Å"Four times, the narrator asserts that there these losses are â€Å"no disaster. Thus, the central thesis of this poem is that over time, one may learn to cope with loss, even with the loss of those we love† (â€Å"Elizabeth Bishop’s â€Å"One Art† Page 1 of 2). By using different claims of losses, Bishop was able to suggest a statement following certain types of solutions to deal with the loss. For example, the first stanza, including throughout the poem, included the fiercely used phrase that â€Å"the art of losing isn’t hard to master† (Bishop 1499). In the second stanza, it provides the answer to the conflict of trying to master the art of losing by â€Å"losing something every day. Accept the fluster of lost door keys, the hourly bad spent†¦Ã¢â‚¬  With this said, Bishop suggests to readers that by â€Å"practicing losing farther, losing faster,† the readers will be able to achieve their goal: to master the art of losing (1499). â€Å"As we do so, we will recognize that these daily losses truly are no signifi cant† (â€Å"Elizabeth Bishop’s â€Å"One Art† Page 1 of 2). When Bishop adds reference to herself in the poem, the transition from the more trivial day-to-day losses is nothing compared to her own specific incidents. Her incidents include â€Å"lost of her mother’s watch,†¦/†¦next-to-last, of three loved houses went. /†¦lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,/ some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent†¦Ã¢â‚¬ (Bishop 1499). The bigger loss suggested in this poem was â€Å"-Even losing you† (1499). The Webster definition of losing is: resulting in or likely to result in defeat, or marked by many losses or more losses than wins. In the beginning of this poem, losing is defined as the misplacement of an item; therefore, resulting in not being able to locate the item again. For instance, the lost door keys were a misplaced item. But, as the poem progresses, the items being lost are getting bigger and more significant. The level of losing is definitely becoming more defining and more coping. â€Å"Places, and names, and where it was you meant/ to travel†¦ I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or/next-to last, of three loved houses went†¦I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,/ some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent/†¦it wasn’t a disaster† (Bishop 1499). The combination of stanza 4 and 5 give a couple of suggestions. First, the poem progressed from the smaller things that should not have been of concern to larger things that start to matter. â€Å"But by stanza four, a slightly different meaning of â€Å"losing† creeps into the poem—that is, â€Å"losing† as â€Å"coping with loss†¦The narrator apparently manages to cope†¦Ã¢â‚¬  (Elizabeth Bishop’s â€Å"One Art† Page 2 of 2). In this poem, the attitude that the speaker conveys in each stanza seems to fluctuate as the losses get greater. With her uses of punctuation and â€Å"courageous pretense built into this poem,† it seems as though Bishop tries to convey a â€Å"wry, funny, and flippant and very determined not to sound weepy- eyed† type of attitude (Krishnan Page 1 of 3). The trivial matters suggested in the beginning of the poem don’t seem to cause a big affect on the speaker’s attitude. Towards the end, the poem conveyed a sense of how the speaker was feeling by using â€Å"the joking voice, a gesture I love† (Bishop 1499). With this â€Å"joking voice,† she was able to yet again point out that â€Å"the art of losing’s not too hard to master† (1499). With this repetitive type of suggestion, it is almost as if â€Å"this phrase turns it into an incantation, warding off potential feelings of loss† (Elizabeth Bishop’s â€Å"One Art† Page 2 of 2). This poem uses an abundant amount of literary devices especially hyperboles and irony. One Art is a very ironic villanelle poem. The phrase â€Å"losing is an art† might suggest that her attempt of persuading herself and readers that internal pain can be evaded; even if the predictable, and most catastrophic, losses that happen in our lives does not have to be a disaster; or could it be an excuse? (Schmeer Page 1 of 3). The hedging in the narrator’s phrases parallels hedging throughout this poem, a poem whose very existence denies what its lines seem to want to claim: the art of losing is hard to master, especially when that â€Å"art† refers to coping with the loss of someone we love, someone who goes away, someone whose going away is a disasterâ⠂¬ .