Response To One Art Poem

In Response to One Art
The poem that I have chosen for review is “One Art” (Strand and Boland, pg.11-12), written by Elizabeth Bishop. This particular poem focuses on the simplicity of loss. Specifically, on how easy it is to lose and then move on. Despite the unimportant losses presented in some of the items mentioned, I felt as though the core message of the poem was that it’s easy to lose those around you despite your caution, and eventually, one must learn to move on.
A particular line in Bishop’s poem that stood out to me was, “So many things seem filled with the intent / to be lost that their loss is no disaster.”(pg. 11) To me, this line represented so many emotions and scenarios that occur when loss transpires in …show more content…
This is the last line in the entire poem, thus, it is the epitome of the previous lines’ build up. As such, I believe that this line comprises Bishop’s own evolution of a system for coping. For instance, by mentioning how it’s not difficult to master, Bishop is sharing her own journey of experiencing loss. Bishop may see loss as easy due to her culmination of personal experiences regarding the loss of close family members. In addition, she states that despite how a certain loss may seem like a disaster, it is indeed not. For me, this speaks a bit about how people unexperienced with loss often focus on the negative, and then only view the world through a black lens that paints everything worse than it may have been before, thus resulting in the views of loss becoming disastrous. However, Bishop’s standpoint clearly shows how she is on the opposite side if the spectrum where loss is seen as inevitable and thus not treated with as much weight as someone less experienced, which is how mastering the art of loss becomes