ADVANCE ENGLISH

ONE ART BY ELIZABETH

Presented to Miss Fatima
 GROUP MEMBERS
• Muhammad Mubeen Arif
• Areeba Khurram
 ONE ART
• The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster

of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:

places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or

next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,

some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture

I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.
 ABOUT POET
• Elizabeth Bishop was an American poet and short-story writer.
She was Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from
1949 to 1950, the Pulitzer Prize winner for Poetry in 1956, the
National Book Award winner in 1970, and the recipient of the
Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 1976.
 SUMMARY
• This poem is obviously about losing things. But not just the
things that Bishop has down on paper, if you look deeper you
can sense a tone of grief to it, the last stanza really seems like
someone is forcing out cheerfulness, this leads me to believe that
Bishop's poem is about how people tend to hide their feelings
behind apparent nonchalance while inside they are shattered
into a million pieces.
 STANZA
• The poem is a loop of six stanzas about dealing with the
phenomenon of losing elements in life.
 SYMBOL
• – “lost door keys, watch” – losing time, “watch” – reflects her
relationship with her mother as she loses her mother’s watch,
“you” – lover
 IRONY
• – “even losing you” – reduces the importance of loss of
partner
 PERSONIFICATION
• – “so many things seem filled with the intent to be lost” –
personified materials to justify the phenomenon of loss
 HYPERBOLE
• – “Two cities…/some realms I owned” – comparing locations to
possessions and large losses in life
 IMAGERY
• – “the joking voice, gesture I love”
 RHYMING
• The rhyme scheme in the poem is “ababaa”