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Comment 25 of 45, added on December 18th, 2005 at 11:50 AM.
Frankly I've never heard Ms. Elizabeth Bishop and her poem "One Art" before the film. It was really impressive to me when I've heard the poem in the film of "In her shoes". Today I watched the film, "In her shoes". And I got the name of the poet and poem. I checked in internet, and I got it. Thanks to the writer of the film that s/he brought this beatiful work to us. We lost my dad last year after twelve years of health battle. Losing a loved one is a disaster, true. The feelings change and transform, but it catches you up everyday. It is so in my case. This sense is with me until the very end. However, life goes on with or without us. As always, I know. I think and pray everyday for all we loved and for all we lost. Now I've got also Bishop's beatiful "One Art" in my hand. Really good work.
Charlie Brown from Turkey
Comment 24 of 45, added on November 16th, 2005 at 8:26 PM.
the poet should have wished to master the art of losing, and successed in most of it, overcome the loss of so many things. now i wonder if she could have successed in mastering the art of losing love. the poem evokes huge grief she suffered from by losing it. she must have written the poem right in the middle of grief, with earnest desire to overcome it. the poet was tough cos she knew she was weak and struggled to get over the weakness.
Yuko from Japan
Comment 23 of 45, added on November 14th, 2005 at 6:08 PM.
Mastering an art is a very hard thing to do, usually requires effort and years of practice and experience. What the writer is saying though, is a paradox: the "art of loosing" isn't hard to master. In other words, "losing is easy".
You can lose things and not realise.. You might lose materialistic things, houses, rivers, continents even... It's easy to do, it's "not hard to master losing"...
But when it comes to losing a beloved one... That's when although it's been so "easy" and out of one's control possibly (perhaps because one did not value enough what one had?) then, although this "art" is perhaps "mastered", one is no master... He's suffered a disaster!
So through the contrast of being a master, a master of losing (in general being a master would be considered a success, something to be proud of), this is actually so disastrous... Cause it's really hard to keep something valuable like love - although easy to lose...
Stelios from United Kingdom
Comment 22 of 45, added on November 12th, 2005 at 9:36 AM.
Before seeing the movie, I had never heard of Ms. Bishop...nor had I ever thought of losing as art...wow. This work is important.
Joy from United States
Comment 21 of 45, added on November 4th, 2005 at 2:34 AM.
"one art" reinforces the poem by that one art being love, and that love aka one art was the one thing that could bring disaster
shawd from United States
Comment 20 of 45, added on October 21st, 2005 at 11:29 PM.
I just love this poem....
I had never heard of Eliza Bishop until I saw the movie in her shoes with Cameron Diaz and Toni Collette where it is read in the movie and I loved it and had to come and find it here on line!
I just think that this poem can effect anyone that has lost something even if it is a person that we loved or such something that we owned and dealing with losing something is something that we all deal with everyday of our lives!!
Katie from Australia
Comment 19 of 45, added on October 16th, 2005 at 10:54 PM.
A poem is like a pact between reader and poet. There is the poem the writer thinks he/she wrote, and the poem the reader experiences or hears. Both the writer and reader brings personal experiences to the poem, and so the poem will never be the same for all readers, nor should it be. In its broadest sense, it is a poem about the difficulty of loss, but in its most specific sense it can be personalized by each reader. Having just lost my husband after 32 years of marriage, my understanding of the poem is that all the foregoing losses paled in signifcance to the loss of love. For someone who might have a loved one with Alzheimers, this poem could certainly relate to the loss of shared history and connection.
I abhor it when someone tells a person a poem can't mean what they felt. Sometimes we must ripen before we are ready for a poem. The same poem can mean something entirely different depending on where we are at that moement in time. When you are 19, The Love Song of J. Alred Prufrock will not have the same meaning as when you are 50.
Why can't a literary discussion of poetry allow all viewpoints, supported of course by which parts of the poem evoked those feelings?
Gayle from United States
Comment 18 of 45, added on September 30th, 2005 at 6:08 PM.
I agree with John from the United States. Re-read the last paragraph and note that she is forcing, literally forcing, herself to write that the loss of a loved one only looks like a disaster. She is forcing herself to write it in the desperate belief that once it is on paper, it might actually be true. That if it is written down to the contrary, she might lose some of the anguish and desperation that rings so clear in her poem. Re-examine the phrase "the art of losing isn't hard to master"; she is stating that the annoyance, the fluster, and at times the abosulute tradgedy of losing is something that occurs beyond your control, and you can only achieve the art of losing.
Catherine from United States
Comment 17 of 45, added on September 29th, 2005 at 6:21 AM.
The poem “One Art” This lovely poem is written in a difficult form -the Villanelle. This poetic style is named for the French poet Francois Villon (1431-1474). The construction of a villanelle is straightforward, however very hard to master in my opinion. It consists of five stanzas of three lines each. These five stanzas have the first and third lines rhyming (rhyme scheme A B A). A sixth and last stanza is in the form of a quatrain with three out of the four lines rhyming (rhyme scheme A B A A). In addition to the specific rhyme scheme, the first and third lines alternately recur throughout the poem, and are repeated as the last two lines of the final quatrain.
The primary challenge of the villanelle is to continue to hold the reader's interest, even as you reuse the first and third lines from the originating stanza. Thinking up lines that can be used repeatedly without becoming boring or repetitive can be a challenge, so making them meaningful is a must. Also, reusing the lines demands that you find a array of words to rhyme with them - words that do not violate the meter of the verses, or strain the lines with too many or too few syllables.
Bishop begins with what seems to be, in effect, a 'handbook' on dealing with progressively greater losses. Initially the poem seems to be humorous, even as the losses become greater and greater. In the last stanza however, the cover of humor and exaggeration are dropped just enough to give us a glimpse of the speaker's true anguish, and the poem is revealed to be a love poem.
Zjaane
Comment 16 of 45, added on September 9th, 2005 at 7:10 PM.
This poem was the poem of the day on the day before my son died. My 25 yr old son died on October 21,2004.The word disaster in the poem rings true, oh so true.
rhonda from United States
This poem has been commented on more than 10 times. Click below to see the other comments.
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Frankly I've never heard Ms. Elizabeth Bishop and her poem "One Art" before the film. It was really impressive to me when I've heard the poem in the film of "In her shoes". Today I watched the film, "In her shoes". And I got the name of the poet and poem. I checked in internet, and I got it. Thanks to the writer of the film that s/he brought this beatiful work to us. We lost my dad last year after twelve years of health battle. Losing a loved one is a disaster, true. The feelings change and transform, but it catches you up everyday. It is so in my case. This sense is with me until the very end. However, life goes on with or without us. As always, I know. I think and pray everyday for all we loved and for all we lost. Now I've got also Bishop's beatiful "One Art" in my hand. Really good work.
Charlie Brown from Turkey