A Literary Analysis Of Elizabeth Bishop's One Art

From this one poem, it is actually hard to understand and fully grasp Elizabeth Bishop’s personality. She seems to be an optimist, but at the same time, she is sarcastic and almost seems to be a pessimist. Her pessimism is completely understandable if one fully comprehends her work though. In “One Art,” Bishop expects to lose anything good in her life but accepts this fate and learns to live with it. Elizabeth Bishop states her plot well, lets her audience know that the poem is about loss, and allows her intent to show.
The plot for this poem is not at all hidden; Bishop’s plot of being unafraid of loss is the obvious plot throughout “One Art.” She proves this by saying, “None of these will bring you disaster” meaning that life may seem terrible
She uses the example, “I lost my mother’s watch” to show the wide variety of lost things in her world (Bishop line 10). This example is meant to be explanatory of the loss of even family heirlooms. Bishop even jokes of losing a person seemingly close to her by saying, “Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture / I love) I shan’t have lied” (Bishop lines 16-17). While most people are upset when someone leaves their life for any reason, she presents it in a sarcastic way. Bishop uses personal examples to show what she has lost and that she is still moving on, “And, vaster, / some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent” (Bishop lines 13-14). She has gotten so used to losing large things that she can now create other “realms” through her imagination (“Critical Casebook” 504). No matter how large her loss may be, she shows that it can be overcome.
In “One Art,” Elizabeth Bishop does a fantastic job at developing her theme by clearly stating her plot, letting the audience in on her element, and allowing her theme to shine. She lets it be known that her losses upset her, but she remains optimistic throughout most of the work. Bishop presents her thoughts in a poetic way while still allowing her true meanings to show. The ability to do this so well shows how great of a writer Elizabeth Bishop really is. “One Art” is a wonderful example of a truly exemplary poem about someone’s raw