Every person loses sometimes. In Elizabeth Bishop’s poem “One Art,” Bishop displays her accepting attitude to losing. Using verse form and language, Bishop is able to express her different feelings about losing. Because of her experiences with loss, the poet is able to express her attitude towards loss.
Throughout the poem, verse form plays an important role in Elizabeth Bishop’s description of losing. Every tercet from lines 1 to 15 helps to describe that the speaker “[loses] something everyday.” Through the repetition of “master” and “disaster” in the first five tercets, Bishop creates a tolerant mood. Following the verse form of a villanelle, the poet abruptly changes the mood in the last quatrain. Instead of letting her accepting mood prevail through the entire poem, Bishop changes her tone into one of agony. By contrasting what does and does not bring “disaster,” the speaker shows that “losing isn’t hard to master.” This refrain is seen in every other stanza and serves as a......
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Approximate Word Count: 418
Approximate Pages: 2 (260 words per double-spaced page) |