One Art by Elizabeth Bishop

Bishop's poem "One Art" is an interesting commentary on something everyone goes through: loss. Whether it's losing a small possession such as door keys, or a partner, a house or a memory, everyone goes through loss at many times in their life. Bishop, however, compares loss not to a bad thing, but to an art or skill, even one that you can get better at or master. She is sending a message that loss is okay by talking about it like something she tries to do and get better at. Bishop uses a lot of repetition to illustrate how common it is for people to lose things and just how many things we can lose. The line "The art of losing isn't hard to master" is repeated in almost every stanza of the poem, reassuring the reader that losing things is not uncommon or unusual, even if you feel like you are always losing things. Just the way she refers to it as an art gives the reader the feeling that it's not a terrible thing like we all assume, and the fact that it isn't hard to master further implies that everyone does it. The repeated assurance that it is not a disaster drives home the theme of this poem, which itself is almost like advice on how to get over loss. The way she describes things as having the "intent to be lost" makes it seem unavoidable. So we must accept it, and realize, as she tells us, that it is not a disaster. She uses commands to remind us that it could be worse. If we think we have gotten good at losing things, we can still be better. We can lose things every day. We can lose things farther or lose them faster, yet still, it's not a disaster. We can lose whole cities and vast lands, and it still is not a disaster. She talks about what she has lost in the past, which is comforting since she maintains that is is not a disaster. At the end, her convoluted comparison is concluded by saying, even though the art of losing may look like disaster, its not too hard to master. The way she describes losing contrary to normal thought, yet still accurately is really interesting.