Elizabeth Bishops "One Art," is an emotional poem that displays" losing is not just an art, but a mastered skill. This is shown from a series of losing minor items, leading up to treasured loss; becoming personal and therefore something she can not master. Although, it may seem that "One Art" transmits the basic idea that losing something is a disaster, the speaker makes it a point to emphasize words to prove many losses are not disasters. The protest of disaster is repeated throughout the whole poem. Bishop uses different literary devices to express her thoughts. .
The speaker uses verse form and language to show her attitude about losing objects. The verse form is a villanelle, which is a nineteen line poem consisting of five tercets followed by a quatrain. In the second stanza, the poem is told in second person. "Losing something everyday," seems to tell us to practice the art of losing things. In the fourth stanza, the first person is used and the speaker relates how she "lost her mother's watch," along with other life episodes. The speaker is trying to convince herself that losing things is as hard as it seems and not to worry, by repeating the line "The art of losing isn't hard to master." The frequently used word "disaster" tends to make the meaning of the poem begin to take shape. You can realize from the adverbs: even losing you; not too hard to master, that Bishop is careful how she composes them into the poem. .
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Also, the speaker uses hyperboles when describing in the fifth tercet that she lost "two cities some realms I owned." Since she clearly did not own two cities or lose a realm, she compares this to a big loss in her life. .
The narrator starts to display irony in the last stanza. It states, "Even losing you," the remarks that losing this person is not "too hard" to master. The change in attitude by adding the word "too" shows that the speaker has an ironic tone for herself in her loss or possibly someone close to her.