Textuality » 3LSCA InteractingASorrentino - Analysis of the poem "One art"
by 2020-10-12)
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Considering the title, the poem might be about art; it may be about one specific type of art. The poem is arranged into six stanzas of three lines each, while the last stanza is made of four lines. So in the poem we can identify five tercets and one quatrain. The rhyme scheme is ABA, and ABAA in the last stanza, whose first line is more an example of consonance than rhyme (gesture vs faster/vaster/disaster), but it more or less reproduces the same sound as in the previous “A” lines. The methafor of "losing" as an "art" runs through the poem suggesting that losing things is not so important, but losing people and significative conditions, such as living in a certain place or house, is much more serious, and we need to learn the "art" of survival after a loss. The register is fairly informal, as shown by contracted forms (“isn’t”, “wasn’t”) and the direct address to the listener/reader through imperative and the pronoun “you”. There are some common words such as “places”, “names”, “houses”, and most of the vocabulary belongs to everyday language. The poem itself can be read as a metaphor: “One art” may suggest that the art of losing and the art of writing poems are one and same. We refine our ability to lose things, making it an “art”. In the poem there are two assonances:
There are five enjambment in lines 2-3; 4-5; 8-9; 11-12; 16-17. Considering the verbal forms, the present is the most prevailing tense. |