Finding Meaning In Elizabeth Bishop's 'One Art'

Gail Cadwell once said “I know now that we never get over great losses; we absorb them, and they carve us into different, often kinder, creatures” In Richard Wagamese’s novel, Ragged Company, the theme of loss is developed through the main characters’ physical strength to face the challenges of life with without a sense of fear regardless of the risk of disappointment, their emotional willpower to overcome adversity and their influential beliefs that allow them to endure hardships. The physical death of loved ones affect the five best friends’ ability to comprehend their losses. The emotional tragedies that each character develops have an expressive impact these characters’ perception of the world around them. The loss of spiritually influences how each individual deals with their own hardships and struggles. As a direct result of loss, the five main characters are forced to cope with their misfortunes and survive in modern day society.

The speaker in “Dismantling the House” by Stephen Dunn reflects on the demolition of this house with respect to the memories he has of it along with the loss he feels. By speaking directly to the reader he is actually talking himself through how his house will be demolished and what it means to himself. By discussing his house and the demolition of the symbol of a prized memory, the speaker reveals the impossibility of distancing oneself from something whose symbolism is so important; this is important because it reveals the complexities that arise from the loss acquired through the demolition of the house and the ways one tries to drive this loss towards something positive. The speaker utilizes the second person narrative to speak to himself

This notion is particularly evident in the realisation of the persona “years cannot move nor deaths disorienting scale distort those lamp lit presences” reiterating the immortality of memory as a constant, surpassing the boundaries of time and places we go.

In the first lines of “One Art,” Bishop’s tone is that of a melancholy nature. She states that “losing isn’t hard to master” (line 1). She follows this by proclaiming that everything intends to “be lost” from the beginning, so disaster should not be felt when those losses take place (line 3). Erin Christian talks somewhat of this in her essay, “On Loss in Elizabeth Bishop’s ‘One Art’.” One may infer that Bishop’s tone, in these lines, reflects this opinion of easiness with the rhyming of the word “master” with “disaster” (Christian 541). This style is used in a villanelle to be rigid and almost unplanned, which reflects the tone of Bishop’s words in that her opinions and statements throughout are rather unfocused or disorganized. The way that she encourages her readers to “lose something every day” is, in her view, a way to get used to the

In the first stanza, the writer uses many techniques to convey the feeling of loss, when he says,

Despair sometimes becomes the basis of inspiration in which we live out our lives. The "City of One: A Memoir" by Francine Cournos is a testament to this notion by basing her desire to study medicine and psychoanalytic as a result of her wanting to understand her mother’s death. "City of One: A Memoir" is a story of triumph and inspiration through the notion that while an individual’s life may be difficult there is always something greater to live for. Francine Cournos life gives insight into how vicious separation within the attachment cycle can be and while early attachment theorists may say one thing about how it can affect the way we function later in life there is always a chance to stand against it.

As the poem progresses, the misplaced or forgotten items become concepts such as names and ideas, and therefore carry more of an impact. For example, forgetting someone’s name, however not uncommon, can be associated with feelings of embarrassment from the forgettor, and annoyance from the forgotten when they discover that they were not important enough to be remembered. The speaker simply shrugs off these losses because “None of [them] will bring disaster,” as mentioned in line 9. Emotion, often associated with memories is introduced in line 10 when the speaker announces, “I lost my mother’s watch.” An item such as a mother’s watch holds sentimental value, unlike the previously mentioned keys; however, the speaker repeats, “I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster,” (line 15) indicating that the watch was merely a material possession crowded with memories. At this point, the reader recognizes the feeling of missing something associated with greater losses of objects and ideas the speaker regards with more emotional attachment.

Referring closely to the language of the poets, explain how loss is presented in “Stop All The Clocks” and “The Voice.”

American poet and short story writer Elizabeth Bishop lived between February 8, 1911- October 6, 1979. She won many awards such as The Pulitzer Prize, The National Book award, and The Neustadt International Prize for literature in 1976. Bishop was said to work obsessively on her poems and would spend years perfecting them. Two out of the many poems she wrote were “One Art”( a poem about a woman who says we can master the art of losing), and “The Waiting Room” (A speaker describing her experience as a young girl reading the National Geographic magazine, taking place on February 1918). Elizabeth implicitly used the two poems to demonstrate how people are connected through their own vulnerability.

In addition to that, all the things they enjoyed and cherished were all forcefully taken away from them. They have lost so many things to others: their traditional livelihood, the places their ancestors walked, their sacred grounds and their tribal culture and so on. This loss sends them to the depths of despair and the following lines show this feeling effectively.

Her diction is strong, confident, and unweathering. In the second stanza, the speaker introduces the first item that isn’t difficult to lose and reminds readers of the daily life hassles of finding lost keys. This is the first example of something in life that is easily lost for her. She further backs it up her original statement by saying that their intent is “to be lost” (3), saying that things are meant to be lost, no matter what happens. She instructs the audience to “lose” and “accept” (4), which suggests that she has gone through loss before and it would be better to accept losing things since it would not hurt as much. She then instructs the audience to “practice” (7) losing, so her heart will not be crushed when the audience is accustomed to losing. By line 6, the speaker gets frantic. Her words become careless and the words take a sort of rhythm. She says “losing farther, losing faster”. The alliteration in this line emphasizes how much and how fast she has lost that it is in a place so unreachable at this point. She then loses “places, and names, and where it was [she] meant / to travel” (8-9). She lost more important things, but they were bearable.

Has anyone lived a life without misfortune? Doubtable; even the person with what could be described as the ideal life deals with some form of adversity. The novel, Speak, and the short story, The Third and Final Continent, both use plot as a way to convey themes of hardship. Moreover, these texts both use symbolism in order to develop their themes as well. The Art of Resilience and Speak utilize characterization as a method of developing their respective themes. Speak, The Third and Final Continent, and The Art of Resilience each deal with the theme that all people must learn to cope with adverse situations.

My experience with loss with comes from p.56 when the author talks about when we first come into life. “We enjoy being held, and then we’re suddenly put down.As we get older,we lose our friends when we or they move away, we lose our toys when they break or get lost, and we lose the softball championship. We have our first loves only to lose them. And the series of losses has just begun.”(pg.56) I think everything the author said spoke out to me especially “And the series of losses has just begun.”(pg.56) I even remember at a young age playing little league and wanting to win every game to end up either losing or winning sometimes. As a kid you think everything is perfect that your parents always have your back. I’ve seen it first hand my nieces and nephews just like any other 4 and 5 year old and maybe even older kids still believe this that their mom and dad are invincible can't die that they are forever living. However when you get older your youth is robbed from you, you slowing start to realize that everyone has their time even your own parents. Growing up for me loss was everywhere I lost two of my best friends because I had to move. Come to find out one

The last two lines of the poem possess an extremely powerful sense of defeat and sorrow.

All times, the disappearance of cherishable beings brings people unbearable agony. Eventually, they cry, and then suffer more heartache, yet the attitudes when confronting a farewell vary dynamically within individuals. In Dylan Thomas’ “Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night” and Elizabeth Bishop’s “One Art”, both speakers experience a painful loss. However, while Thomas strongly opposes the undeniable fact of his father’s death process, Bishop reluctantly accepts the departure of her beloved. The two speakers react differently to recover from the ineluctable sadness, to regain inner peace. In the end, the poems’ comparison concludes losing valued relations is distressingly unavoidable, and that there is no ideal way to cope with losses. Therefore,