Textuality » 3PLSC TextualityAVidal - One Art by Elizabeth Bishop
by 2019-01-09)
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Ex. 8 pg. 24 A. Stanza 3 B. Stanza 2 C. Stanza 1 D. Stanza 6 E. Stanza 4 F. Stanza 5
Ex. 9 pg. 25 1. Stanzas 2. Lines 3. Rhyme scheme 4. "You" 5. Loss 6. One 7. Disaster
ANALYSIS One Art is a poem taken from the collection The Complete Poems by the American poet Elizabeth Bishop. Reading only the title, in my opinion the poem might be about one specific type of art, but not the art of drawing and painting, rather the art linked for example to music, dance and theatre. Regarding its layout, the poem is arranged into six stanzas: stanzas from 1 to 5 have three lines each, so they are tercets, while the last stanza is made of four lines, so it is a quatrain. Reading the poem, I notice some patterns: for examples, the sentence “the art of losing isn’t hard to master” is repeated lots of times and also the word “disaster” appears in stanzas 1, 3, 5 and 6. At first glance, I find the poem not so much difficult regarding the words used, but its interpretation requires careful reading and its message is hidden. Moreover I felt sadness, a sense of loss, pain and frustration, because losing something or someone is never pleasant. The rhyme scheme is ABA, and ABAA in the last stanza. The register is fairly informal, indeed the poem shows contracted forms, imperative and the pronoun “you”. Furthermore there are some common words such as “places”, “names”, “houses”, and most of vocabulary belongs to everyday life. In the poem there are lots of figures of speech, such as enjambments, assonances, consonances and a big metaphor: “One Art” may suggest that the art of losing and the art of writing poems are one and the same. The speaker addresses a “you” who is not the reader, but the person he or she has lost. The message is that losing things and people is part of life. Losing things is not so important, but losing people and significant conditions, such as living in a certain place or house, is much more serious, and we need to learn the “art” or survival after a loss. Comparing the predictions made before reading the poem to what the poem expresses, the two things don’t match. Indeed the poem suggest something related to art, while the text is about various types of loss and the feelings connected to them. I’m in agreement with the poet, because I think that losing a loved person is a very painful experience that could really be defined a “disaster”. |