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One Art Analysis Essay

488 Words2 Pages

What do you do when you lose something? Well, Elizabeth Bishop wrote “One Art” to mock how people cannot accept or get over a loss of something. Elizabeth Bishop, used rhyme, meter, and language and structure.
Elizabeth Bishop used rhyming to help mock the idea of loss. In line 1 the speaker says, “The art of losing isn’t hard to master.” Bishop is saying that losing isn’t that hard, rather it is easy to lose things. Bishop rhymes the word master with disaster. For example in line 3, “to be lost that their loss is no disaster.” What Bishop is saying is that losing something isn’t a big deal. Many people lose something and nothing has changed in their day to day life.
The meter for “One Art” by Elizabeth Bishop is iambic pentameter. Bishop used this to help flow the poem from such as lines 10 and 11, “I lost my mother’s watch. And look! My last, or next to last, of three loved houses went.” The flow of the poem helps readers to follow what Elizabeth Bishop is writing. Another example of this flow is lines 13, 14, and 15, “I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster, some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent. I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.” The meter …show more content…

An example for language is the rhyming of master and disaster in lines 16 through 19, “-Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident the art of losing’s not to master though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.” Elizabeth Bishop uses these wording to mock mastering losing things, because nobody wants to lose something. The disaster shows that even losing something, it will not be the end of the world. Bishop also uses structure to help evoke mocking by making the reader pause after each stanza. For example lines 13 through 19, “I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster, some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent. I miss them, but it wasn't a

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