Essay Interpreting one Art By Elizabeth Bishop :: essays research papers

Essay Interpreting "One Art" by Elizabeth BishopIn "One Art" by Elizabeth Bishop, the speakers attitude in the last stanzarelates to the other stanzas in poetise form and language. The speaker uses thesedevices to convey her attitude about losing objects.The verse form in "One Art" is villanelle. The poem has tercet stanzas until thelast, which is four lines. In the first three stanzas, the poem is told insecond person. "Lose something each day." seems to command one to practice the artistry of losing things. In the three stanzas, first person is used, and thespeaker relates how she "lost her mothers watch" and other life incidents.However, the speaker addresses her darling "you," and then in the last line,herself.Language in "One Art" is simple, yet many literary devices are used. The lastline repeated, to the effect of "The art of losing isnt hard to master"suggests that the speaker is trying to convince herself th at losing things isnot hard and she should not worry. Also, the speaker uses hyperboles whendescribing in the fifth tercet that she lost "two cities...some realms I owned."Since she could not own, much less lose a realm, the speaker seems to becomparing the realm to a large loss in her life. Finally, the statement in thefinal quatrain "Even losing you" begins the irony in that stanza. The speakerremarks that losing this person is not " in any case hard" to master. The shift inattitude by adding the word "too" introduces that the speaker has an ironic tone forherself in her loss or perhaps her husband or someone else close to her.Language and verse form show in "One Art" how the losses increase in importanceas the poem progresses, with the losses in lines 1-15 being mostly trivial or