'The Speaker's Coping Mechanism In One Art' By Elizabeth Bishop

As humans, when something traumatic happens to us, we all do different things to help us cope. In “One Art” by Elizabeth Bishop, we are able to see that the speaker’s coping mechanism is to convince herself that everything is fine. Through the poem, we can tell that the speaker seems like she is in a trance-like state, where she is repeating things like “The art of losing isn’t hard to master;” and “but it wasn’t a disaster.” Even when the speaker mentions losing her mother’s watch and losing a loved one, she reassures herself that it is not as bad as it seems. However, after reading the poem, we can tell that the speaker is in denial. In reality, the art of losing is very hard to master. As a result, the singsong form of this poem allows us,

The speaker constantly repeats things in a way that makes it seem like she is trying to make herself feel better. The repetitions are like refrains to a song that she is constantly singing to herself. In the first, second, and fourth stanza, the speaker repeats, “The art of losing isn’t hard to master”, then to gain reassurance, the speaker then goes on to repeat, “but it wasn’t a disaster.” In fact, the art of losing for many people is very hard to master. Losing does not get easier with time, but rather, it gets harder; especially when losing a loved one. This is why is it so easy to notice the speaker’s unhealthy coping techniques. The speaker repeats full lines as if they are learned mottos. She may not believe the things she is saying, but she continues to lie to herself. Instead of confronting her losses, the speaker tries to convince herself that nothing is as disastrous as it seems. We can sense that the speaker thinks that her grief is unperceivable, but we, as readers, can see that the constant repetition is due to her incapability of dealing with these traumatic events in her life. The prose allows us to realize that something traumatic has happened in the speaker’s life; however, we lose the emotion that is present in the poem when the speaker tries to brainwash herself into thinking that losing is effortless. Moreover, in the last stanza, the speaker states, “the art of

Throughout the entire poem, we can see that the speaker has her guard up and she is not making her pain evident to the readers. However, when Bishop writes, “—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture / I love) I shan’t have lied” we begin to see a break in the speaker’s armor. Through this use of the dash before “even”, we can see that there is a break in the speaker’s perfect speech. Before, we, as readers could tell that the speaker seemed to be in a trance-like state, but now, it is like she is noticing her reality. This stutter before “even” is like she is snapping herself out of her trance and realizing that in fact, it is hard to lose someone. However, she still tries to use her same coping mechanisms of convincing herself that she is fine. Also, when the speaker states, “the art of losing’s not too hard to master / though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster” we can see that even in the last line, she is not fully convinced that the art of losing is not hard to master because she makes herself write it down too. Therefore, as, readers, we can conclude that she indeed does not believe that art of losing isn’t hard to master, because this break in the singsong hypnotic poem shows us that deep down, she is also skeptical of this. However, due to all of the pain that comes with confronting reality, she refuses to be honest with herself. Consequently, when converted to prose, we lose that