One Art Analysis Essay

636 Words3 Pages

Elizabeth Bishop’s poem, One Art, discusses the theme of loss and how it affects the speaker. The structure of the poem itself as well as language affects the overall tone and the shift in attitude towards the growing impact of loss throughout the poem.
The poem is structured as a Villanelle. With a Villanelle poem, the repetition of certain words and lines provides emphasis towards the theme of loss. The line, “The art of losing isn’t hard to master” is repeated four times throughout the six stanzas of the poem. This line highlights that loss is expected and normal for the speaker. The speaker has experienced loss countless times throughout their life, so the repercussions that come with loss the speaker is not a stranger to. With experiences comes …show more content…

This is where the reader is able to see loss truly affecting the speaker. The repeated line of, “The art of losing isn’t hard to master” is continued in this final stanza to include, “Though it may look like disaster”. This additional phrase emphasizes that the loss of this person significantly negatively affected the speaker. “Looking like disaster” indicates that the speaker is visibly distraught and upset over this loss and is not able to hide under a facade anymore. Contrasting the loss of items and intangible objects to the loss of this person determines that the loss of the person has a dramatic impact on the speaker whereas with the losses of intangible objects and items was minuscule. This correlates to the overall theme of how people will try to put on a facade and act as if everything is alright in their lives when they could be falling apart internally. The tinier losses of smaller objects that the speaker owned taught him how to deal with loss, and how to put a fake smile on his face even when things may not have been going his way. As soon as the greater loss of losing a person close to