Literary Analysis of One Art by Elizabeth Bishop

The author, Elizabeth Bishop, wrote a poem titled “One Art” which took place 1927, in Boston. In the story, the main character, Elizabeth Bishop, talks about and describes the feeling of losing things. In this poem Bishop talked about what she has lost and how losing those things made her feel. The author tried to catch the reader’s attention by using such a rhyme (ABAB) to keep the reader interested throughout the poem, repetition. Bishop even uses exclamation points to show strong emotion towards the topic she was writing about or to show more force. How were all of these things used as the author’s attitude changed?

To begin with, the author starts off by saying “the art of losing isn’t hard to master”, what the author was basically saying is losing is not something that is hard to do or something that is hard to get into. Then backs up her point by saying losing something is not anything to cry over, it’s especially not a disaster. She continues on as she says “lose something every day” so she has now accepted it and she is used to it by now. As she begins to name all the things she can think of that a person could lose, she still does not see how that can really cause “disaster”. But as she continues to think it sparks something in her thoughts, it is some of the things she has lost.

Obviously, the author’s thoughts starts to roam to the things she has lost in her lifetime, which causes her to mention the time she lost her mother’s watch. Losing her mother’s watch did not seem to affect her or cause disaster in her household so that is her point one. Her attitude at this point in the poem is somewhat nonchalant, the author makes it seem like losing something is just another everyday thing in her daily life. The author basically says losing something is not worth causing disaster over, disaster will not happen if something so small is lost, such as her mother’s watch. As she feels losing is something that is natural and that can’t be helped.

Lastly, the author finally opens up to the reader about something that was more close to her heart that she lost. Her cities is what she lost, to her it was more than just cities, they were of great size and quantity. She has now started to show more emotion to losing something than it just being an everyday thing, being bound to happen. The author shows a great amount of emotion, she even says she misses them. But even that is still not enough to be considered a disaster to the author. Her attitude has slightly changed to where she is willing to talk about her losses but still does not see them as a disaster.

To sum up, reading this poem and seeing how the author’s attitude changed a slight bit, getting more in depth to it one can see the author’s pont. Throughout the whole poem the author’s attitude stayed the same until she opened up about the cities she had lost, which caused her to get emotional. The author’s point of the poem was that losing something can happen in the blank of an eye, it’s just that easy. Though it may look like it is a disaster at the time is happened it never really is. All because losing something is bound to happen anytime, any place and any day.