Elizabeth Bishop’s “One Art” is a retrospective contemplation on how it should be easy to deal with losses. The poem is structured as a villanelle and, as such, has a refrain. The refrain does not change structurally but, it’s meaning changes as the poem progresses. Bishop achieved this mainly through the evolution of imagery in the villanelle which moves from superficial objects to references of places and people that are deeply personal to the speaker. The speaker’s break in her confident façade in the final stanza also contributes to the change in the refrain’s meaning as it reveals how the speaker is not so unaffected by losses. Likewise, the repetition of disaster helps frame the evolution of the refrain’s meaning as the word is used in different contexts. Last but not least, the refrain’s structure and diction allow it the flexibility needed for the meaning to change.
The poem follows the structure of the villanelle very closely. “One Art” has five tercets and one quatrain that have the same two repeating rhymes. The villanelle also requires two refrains that are presented in the first tercet as the first and last line and then are alternately used as the final line of each tercet until the quatrain where they are used as the third and fourth line. In the poem, there is one obvious refrain which is “The art of losing isn’t hard to master” (Bishop, 1). This refrains is fairly consistent throughout the poem. However, Bishop does not strictly adhere to the villanelle structure when dealing with the second refrain. The second refrain is not a typical refrain as in it is not a repeated line but a repeated word. Bishop uses the word “disaster” (Bishop, 3) in the place of a whole entire line (for clarity’s sake during this essay i...
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...at the beginning it simply seems to be saying that it is easy to lose things, by the end it is clear that the poem speaks volumes about how loss is not as simple as it seems and it can be extremely difficult to cope with. When the vulnerable and emotional side of the speaker is exposed, the speaker’s statements of it being easy to lose things no longer ring true. Additionally as the imagery becomes more personal it becomes harder for the speaker to deny that their loss is not a disaster and that it does not affect the speaker. Because of this, the refrain becomes more than a comment on the ease of losing things but more the complex emotions that revolved around coping with loss.
Works Cited
"Elizabeth Bishop: Biography" Poetry Foundation. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Mar. 2014 http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/elizabeth-bishop
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/176996
A work of art seeks to fulfill various functions hence, the poem gives me a critical and rational outlook; elicits various emotions and the danger brought by lack of strength and hope while striving for humanity.
..., the content and form has self-deconstructed, resulting in a meaningless reduction/manifestation of repetition. The primary focus of the poem on the death and memory of a man has been sacrificed, leaving only the skeletal membrane of any sort of focus in the poem. The “Dirge” which initially was meant to reflect on the life of the individual has been completely abstracted. The “Dirge” the reader is left with at the end of the poem is one meant for anyone and no one. Just as the internal contradictions in Kenneth Fearing’s poem have eliminated the substantial significance of each isolated concern, the reader is left without not only a resolution, but any particular tangible meaning at all. The form and content of this poem have quite effectively established a powerful modernist statement, ironically contingent on the absence and not the presence of meaning in life.
Poetry stands beyond agreement or disagreement and reinforce all ideas of mysteriousness (671). In “Lady Lazarus”, the story of Plath’s life with her tendency of self-destruction sheds light the meaning of the poem. A poem can be a reflection of the writer’s life; to understand the particular poem better, a study about the writer background helps to construct the subliminal meaning within the lines. Plath reconstructs the meaning of being a survivor from destruction, as she sustains the trauma of life that causes her to be suicidal. “Although “Lady Lazarus” draws on Plath’s won suicide attempt, the poem tells us little of the actual event. It is not a personal confession, but it does reveal Plath’s understanding of the way the suicidal person thinks.” (Dickie). The courageous endeavor to survive proves that the death is no longer terrifying. “Peel off the napkin/O my enemy./D I terrify?---“. On the contrary, the character in the poem, Lady Lazarus comes out to the light and challenges to whoever the enemy is, by saying, “I am you opus,/I am your valuable,/The pure gold baby”. She addresses how worthy she is as a human being, and she is revived and stronger than
The poems “Sea Rose” by H.D and “Vague Poem” by Elizabeth Bishop were both written by two women who took over the Victorian era. H.D’s works of writing were best known as experimental reflecting the themes of feminism and modernism from 1911-1961. While Bishop’s works possessed themes of longing to belong and grief. Both poems use imagery, which helps to make the poem more concrete for the reader. Using imagery helps to paint a picture with specific images, so we can understand it better and analyze it more. The poems “Sea Rose” and “Vague Poem” both use the metaphor of a rose to represent something that can harm you, even though it has beauty.
This imagery is incredibly personal, as it discusses the loss of a person. This quote suggests that it is the loss of a loved one because of the added phrase “the joking voice, a gesture I love” (Bishop 556). This quote shows that the person that was lost was important and familiar to the narrator, while simultaneously a loss that was easy to accept. The imagery used in within this poem purposefully starts off with impersonal items and the simplicity of grieving for them, as it adds to the meanings of the final example of imagery displayed in the poem. Bishop writes that the grieving and acceptance come quickly, regardless of the fact the lost entity is a house key or a loved one. This tension effectively portrays the theme, as well as leave room for a second interpretation. The last line of the poem, Bishop says that writing poetry about loss is just as easy as “the art of losing” (556). The final stanza brings forth two meanings of One Art, suggesting most poetry has multiple
Stating “Write It” ( line 19) , “ And Look!” ( line 10) are climactic points in which the speaker wishes to believe herself, that losing really is no disaster, so she must see it, and write it. In the beginning, the poem seems bubbly and unremorseful but as it develops, the speaker shows her real passion for something lost, “.
As the first poem in the book it sums up the primary focus of the works in its exploration of loss, grieving, and recovery. The questions posed about the nature of God become recurring themes in the following sections, especially One and Four. The symbolism includes the image of earthly possessions sprawled out like gangly dolls, a reference possibly meant to bring about a sense of nostalgia which this poem does quite well. The final lines cement the message that this is about loss and life, the idea that once something is lost, it can no longer belong to anyone anymore brings a sense...
This essay is anchored on the goal of looking closer and scrutinizing the said poem. It is divided into subheadings for the discussion of the analysis of each of the poem’s stanzas.
One Art by Elizabeth Bishop is a poem that explores loss in comparison to an art; however, this art is not one to be envied or sought after to succeed at. Everyone has experienced loss as the art of losing is presented as inevitably simple to master. The speaker’s attitude toward loss becomes gradually more serious as the poem progresses.
It is clear that Bishop’s “The Unbeliever” is heavily influenced by her poetic idol Moore because it contains elements are inconsistent with Bishop’s work as a whole. History shows that Elizabeth Bishop was not a strict modernist poet, yet in this sample of her early work you can see her imploring strategies more consistent with Moore’s own unique style. The habit of following a strict structure and the habit of carefully sculpting her poems are two of Moore’s distinctive mannerisms. While the shape of “The Unbeliever” does serve a specific purpose, it is interesting to note that this is an uncommon tactic for Bishop. Not only does Moore heavily influence Bishop’s work “The Unbeliever”, but it is clear that the poem is also specifically impacted by Moore’s poem “The Mind is an Enchanting Thing”. Beyond following a strict rigid structure and rhyme scheme, Elizabeth Bishop goes one step further and borrows an image from Moore’s poem. While it could be mere coincidence that both poems use the image of a bird, the way that Bishop writes the gull to “blindly [seat] himself astride” (Bishop, 24), represents a direct allusion to the way Moore’s kiwi walks along the ground as if it was “blind” (Moore, 124).
Since she could not own, much less lose a realm, the speaker seems to be
Jumping right into the first line of the poem one sees that it begins by stating, “Because I could not stop for Death”. Since this line was selected for the title of the piece, it can be inferred that it must hold some strong significance. Over the course of this poem the reader is drawn to the concl...
In the University Of Arizona Museum Of Art, the Pfeiffer Gallery is displaying many art pieces of oil on canvas paintings. These paintings are mostly portraits of people, both famous and not. They are painted by a variety of artists of European decent and American decent between the mid 1700’s and the early 1900’s. The painting by Elizabeth Louise Vigee-Lebrun caught my eye and drew me in to look closely at its composition.
On line 16 Bishop uses a long hyphen sara to pause before she breaks down and says “¬¬–̶ Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture/”. She is remembering the qualities of the lover she lost. On line 17 when Bishop uses the present tense words “I love…” as if admitting that she still loves the person she lost. Then again as followed on line 17 “…I shan’t have lied. It’s evident”. She admits that she lied in her poem. As mentioned before the thesis repeats in line 18 of the last quatrain stanza but this time uses an extra word, “too”. The word “too” actually means that losing is “not so easy” as she had believed it was at the beginning of the poem. The use of enjambment throughout the poem goes beyond the literal meaning. Bishop’s use of enjambment within the lines interpret that when one loses someone it is not the end of that pain but rather that the pain will always be present and what matters is how one person copes with that pain and accepts the fact that one will always lose. There is much resistance in Bishop’s words from the beginning of the poem when she uses the word “master” as if having control and then switches to the opposing word “disaster” as if out of control. The use of Bishops words at the beginning of the poem refers to her earlier years when she lost her father when she was eight months old which was not so hard
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