ONE ART by

Elizabeth Bishop Karen chong mei tengSharissa john keatsAsha arumugamAmeera akhtar

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;

so many things seem filled with intent

to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster

of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.

The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:

places, and names, and where it was you meant

to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or

next-to-last, of three loved houses went.

The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

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.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture

I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident

the art of losing’s not too hard to master

though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

ONE ART

The poem begins rather boldly with the curious

claim that "the art of losing isn’t hard to master"

The speaker suggests that some things are

basically made to be lost, and that losing them

therefore isn’t a big deal. She suggests that we

get used to loss by practicing with little things,

like house keys or a little bit of wasted time

here and there; the idea is that if you’re

comfortable with the insignificant losses, you’ll

be ready to cope when the big ones come

along.

The losses mentioned in the poem grow more

and more significant. First it’s the things we try

to remember, like names and places, then

more specific items, such as a mother’s watch

or homes one has loved in the past. As these

things begin to pile up, we wonder how much

the speaker has actually mastered this so-

called "art of losing." Is she really as glib (that

is to say, smart-alecky) as she sounds, or does

she still have deep feelings about all of these

things? We’re not so sure.

SUMMARY

However, the last stanza reveals a whole lot to us. We

discover that the loss that really bothers her is that of a

beloved person (friend, family, or lover, we don’t know).

She attempts rather feebly to claim that even this loss isn’t

a "disaster," though it appears to be one; at this point,

though, we see that she really is still sad about the loss,

and hasn’t truly gotten over it.

DESCRIPTION OF THE POSTER

• Why titled as Reminisce?

• Background-

• Spiral/Gyre-

• Suitcase-

• Watch-

• Keys-

• Hand-

• Ground-

• Favourite line in the poem-

OUR POSTER ….

STANZA (I)Lines 1-3

The art of losing isn't hard to master;

so many things seem filled with the intent

to be lost that their loss is no disaster This stanza provides the clear opening

statement of the poem: it boldly declares that

loss isn’t a big deal, and that we should get

used to it.

STANZA (II)

Lines 4-6

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster

of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.

The art of losing isn't hard to master

The poem continues in a rather pedantic tone,

instructing readers to practice losing things by

losing different insignificant items every day.

The speaker tells us to "accept the fluster"

that such losses bring, presumably so we

eventually stop getting flustered by them at all.

STANZA (III)

The speaker brings up the kinds of things we all attempt to

remember but eventually forget.

The losses mentioned grow somewhat more significant, though they

are still vague and these losses still aren’t too important.

Lines 7-9

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:

places, and names, and where it was you meant

to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

STANZA (IV)

Lines 10-12

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or

next-to-last, of three loved houses went.

The art of losing isn't hard to masterThe speaker brings in some things that she’s lost

that are obviously of some emotional significance

to her: her "mother’s watch“

Though the speaker reassures us again at the end

of the stanza that "the art of losing isn’t hard to

master"

STANZA (V)

Lines 13-15

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 losses described here are a little more esoteric

(mysterious)

The losses can be her home, place her loved one,

or represents a certain phase of her life that’s now

in the distant past.

STANZA (VI)Lines 16-19

-Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture

I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident

the art of losing's not too hard to master

though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster

The lost that the speaker has been mulling

over this whole time is her beloved person

and it’s clear to see that this is one loss that

the poet hasn’t mastered.

The last line (the repetition of like, and the

interjection "Write it!" demonstrate the true

difficulty of coming to terms with loss.

LITERACY

DEVICE

Symbolism• Line 4-5 = “Lost door keys, watch”

(misspent hours)

• Line 10 = “Watch” symbolizes her

relationship with her mother (The poet

mentions casually that she lost her

mother’s watch)

• Last stanza = “You” is the lover

IronyFinal quatrain = "Even losing you" The

speaker remarks that losing this person is

not too hard to master. The shift in attitude

by adding the word "too" shows that the

speaker has an ironic tone for herself in her

loss or perhaps her husband or someone

else close to her.

Personification• Line 2-3 = The poet personifies the lost objects (read line 2-3) they want to

get lost.

Hyperboles • Fifth tercet = "two cities...some realms I owned” describes that since she could not own,

much less lose a realm and seems to be comparing the realm to a large loss in her life

Repetiton • The last line = "The art of losing isn't hard to master" suggests that the speaker is

trying to convince herself that losing things is not hard and she should not worry.

Imagery

When Bishop describes the

person she has lost("the joking

voice, gesture I love"), this is

imagery because it brings a

sensory experience to you and

makes you picture the person

by appealing to both your sense

of sight and your sense of

hearing.

Metaphor

Even losing you (the joking

voice, a gesture)

{metaphor for the speaker

losing his happiness}

Alliteration"Then practice losing farther,

losing faster..."

THEMEMemory and the Past

The many things that the poet loses in "One Art" aren’t just concrete

objects, like house keys or watches; rather, they grow more and more

abstract, ranging from misspent hours to a lost loved one. In the world of

the poem, memory isn’t something permanent or reliable, and our pasts are

subject to the same possibility of loss as our possessions. The memory of

past acquaintances and experiences can be dropped by the wayside as

easily as any misplaced doodad, and though Bishop treats all of her losses

here with

A TRIP TO DOWN

MEMORY LANE

SADNESS

Sadness is like the big, fat, mopey elephant in this room. In "One Art," Bishop never comes

right out and says she’s sad about the many losses mentioned in this poem – in fact, she

insists upon the opposite (see "Lies and Deceit" for more on that). Rather than dwell upon

the moment of loss or its aftermath, the poem consciously pushes sadness off to the

sidelines of the reader’s mind. However, by summoning up our own memories of lost things

and people, the poet reminds us that Sadness plays a very significant but unarticulated role

her

FORM AND METER

Iambic Pentameter

has nineteen lines, divided up into six stanzas. The first five have three lines and last

stanza has four. The form follows a very specific rhyme scheme. The poem utilizes two

rhymes – that is to say, everything either rhymes with [a] or [b] (in Bishop’s poem, all the

lines rhyme with either "master" or "intent")

• Triplet 1: Line 1 – refrain 1 (rhyme a, "master")Line 2 (rhyme b, "intent")Line 3 – refrain 2 (rhyme a, "disaster")

Triplet 2: Line 4 (rhyme a, "fluster")Line 5 (rhyme b, "spent")Line 6 – refrain 1 ("master")

Triplet 3: Line 7 (rhyme a, "faster")Line 8 (rhyme b, "meant")Line 9 – refrain 2 ("disaster")

Triplet 4: Line 10 (rhyme a, "last, or")Line 11 (rhyme b, "went")Line 12 – refrain 1 ("master")

Triplet 5: Line 13 (rhyme a, "vaster")Line 14 (rhyme b, "continent")Line 15 – refrain 2 ("disaster")

Quatrain: Line 16 (rhyme a, "gesture")Line 17 (rhyme b, "evident")Line 18 – refrain 1 ("master")Line 19 – refrain 2 ("disaster")