Analysis of the poem “One art”

Reading the title, I expect the poem be about one specific type of art.

The poem is organised in six stanzas and it follows a regular pattern, indeed five stanzas are tercets and the last one has four lines, the intelligent reader must know that the last stanza is the most important because it changes the pattern. The poem in in rhyme, the scheme is ABA and ABAA; the last stanza presents some texts in brackets, they create tear on the floor of the poem.

In the first three stanzas the poetess speaks about the art of losing in general, in the last stanzas she expresses her experience. She speaks loosing objects isn’t important, the only important object you should’t lose are the people who you love, if you lose them you will look like a disaster. 

In the poem there is a repetition of the sentence “The art of losing isn’t hard to master” because the poetess wants to stick the concept into the mind of the intelligent reader. There are some figure speech like consonants, alliteration and enjambement; the words aren’t from hight register, indeed the poem is easy to understand. The reader can personify himself into the experiences of the poetess because that is the objective. The title brings the attention of the reader to another type of art and he can understand it only at the end of the poem.

Into the last stanza the words into the brackets are the advices of the poetess.