Expication of poetry

¶ … Art

Elizabeth Bishop's poem, "One Art," is a study on the ironies we encounter when as we move through life. While many of us strive to be masters of our art, or talent, we rarely desire to become a master at losing things. While this may be true, the poet demonstrates how this art can be easily achieved almost on a daily basis. Bishop illustrates how the art of losing is not difficult to mater through examples in her own life. She moves from seemingly unimportant things to perhaps extremely significant things and then to extremely important personal things that she lost to prove her point.

In the fist lines of the poem, the poet introduces us to her theory, that the art of loss "isn't hard to master / so many things seem filled with the intent / to be lost that their loss is no disaster" (Bishop 1-3). These first few lines are painfully honest and ironic in that no one sets out to be a master at the art of loss - it just happens in out lives. With this notion, the poet continues in the same vein by focusing on some things that she has lost without meaning to have lost them. For example, she points out that many of us lose something every day - from keys to time when we waste an hour doing something worthless. In this respect, we can see how losing can become an art without much effort at all. The second stanza, the poet elaborates on her theory by focusing on "places, names, and where it was you meant / to travel" (8-9). By doing these things, the poet points out, one is not actually involved in so much of a disaster as the art of losing.

In the fourth stanza, the poet turns to more personal losses, as she begins speaking in first person. She begins with seemingly small items of not much interest, including her "mother's watch" (10) and moves quickly to larger more significant items, such as her "next-to-last" (11) house. It is interesting to note that the poet draws attention to things that are lost and things that simply do not belong to her anymore. The keys and the house are not in her possession any longer but the "cities, rivers, and caves" do not belong to her as they once did. This kind of loss, too, does not represent what the poet would define a disaster. However, true loss is explored in the last stanza

The poet's real intention emerges in this stanza as she turns to more personal and private matters. The last stanza is the most powerful in that the poet moves from speaking about things to people - more significantly, "you." The poet also attaches noteworthy attributes to the lover by remembering the "the joking voice, the gesture / I love" (16-7), which move her to reinforce the notion that loss is not difficult to master. It is worth noting that the punctuation in this stanza because it strays from what the poet has employed in earlier stanzas. The dash before "Even" indicates a break in thought as the poet moves to the one thing that truly serves to be a great loss. The parenthetical phrases make the enclosed words stand out even though the poet attempts to conceal the true meaning of these phrases. By breaking from her previous method, she is simply drawing more attention to them. The poet lost the joking voice and the gesture that she loved and these are not things that have been misplaced or things that can be replaced. Similarly, the poet also includes "write it!" (19) in parentheses to wrap up the irony in the poem. Losing is an art that no one in particular wishes to master and the writing about it does not make the art any easier.