Textuality » 3LSCA Interacting

AErrichiello - "One Art" analysis
by AErrichiello - (2020-10-12)
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ANALYSIS:

Considering the title the intelligent reader tries to understand what is the poem about. It should be about a specific type of art like abstract art or impressionist art.

The poem is organised into 5 stanzas of 3 lines each, tercet, and one stanza with 4 lines, quatrain.

The first paragraph is the most important of the poem, it is repeated in stanzas 1, 2, 4 and 6, it is a kind of refrain, there are also other repeated word like: "master" and "disaster", so the poetess wants to focus the reader's attention on that words.

When the intelligent reader reads the poem he/she should feel lost or despair.

The rhyme scheme is ABA, in the last stanza it is ABAA and the first line is more an example of consonance than rhyme.

The "I" voice talks to a "you" expressing sadness and sense of loss, while making ironical comments on the inevitability of losing objects and opportunities. Losing a loved one however, is a much more painful experience, and the poet finally forces herself to acknowledge that that is disaster.

The register is fairly informal, as shown by contracted forms and the use of imperative. There are some common words like: "names", "places"...

There are a lot of figure of speech:

-metaphor, one art is the art of losing 

-enjambement,

-assonance of letter "a"

-consonance of letter "s", "m", "th" and "st".

The prevailing tense is present, there are a lot of imperatives and the main sentence is affirmative.

Looking for the layout the intelligent reader can understand that the most important stanza is the last one because is the longest one, in this stanza there is the message of the poem. 

The poetess wants to tell wants to tell us that common situation like losing keys or wasting time are easier that losing cities, rivers or people.