Eapp Finals

14 Kyla Jayde E. Jose

EAPP Literary Analysis

11-St. Camilla

April 12, 2019 One Art by Elizabeth Bishop: Psychoanalytic Way of Theory

From the book “The Complete Poems” published in the year 1926 up to 1979 by one of the most truthful and active poets in the 1940’s. Elizabeth Bishop was an American poet and a short-story writer born on 8th of February 1911 in Worcester, Massachusetts. She was awarded with high appreciations due to her service and contribution to the literary world. Behind all the success, a tragedy marked in her life, a considerably depressing moments with losing her family at a very young age. She first lost his father who died before her first birthday following her mother died because of certain nervous breakdowns bringing her to the mental hospital when Elizabeth was five years old. A very unusual behavior her mother has developed making her stay even longer inside the mental hospital.

Elizabeth was so young to be left alone by her parents, so she was sent to live either to her father or mother’s grandparents, first in Worcester then Boston. She attended school and became friends Marianne Moore who influenced her to open a new perspective in literature. Having decided to take up the career of Medicine, she turned to poetry, successfully publishing few works that reached millions of readers around the world. “One Art” is few of the poems Elizabeth wrote. Her writing style interests the readers. It is composed of a villanelle with six stanzas, three-line scheme and one four-line stanza. A different style of repetitive lines was applied by Elizabeth but follows a uniformed rhyme scheme. A theory of literature evident in the poem is called Psychoanalytic Theory. In analyzing the text, studying the history first reveals more about the poem and vice versa creating a deeper look at the literature in a wider and historical context. This literature analysis tool focuses on interpreting social, cultural and political factors which may have affected the author in writing the text.

The showance of reality in this poem captured its essence determining the meaning of the title One Art. Elizabeth’s artistic strategy using disaster which is ironically used pertaining to all the

things she first lost in her life. “To be lost that their loss is no disaster.”; “None of these will bring disaster.” In it she meditates on the art of losing. Contradicting it may be, Elizabeth uniquely featured what is really art behind the losing. First thought, the poem would revolve around what it it’s like to lose a person. Apparently not, because she builds up that even a small catalogue of losing your house keys is significant art. Lose something every day. Accept the fluster of lost door keys, the hour badly spent. Secondly mentioned was her mother’s watch. Stories even in real lives we value such fortune. I lost my mother’s watch. The poem climaxed valued items but slowly losing a house, land and her loved ones. I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster, some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent. —Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture I love) I shan’t have lied. Reflecting to reality, it was Elizabeth’s actual losses during her lifetime. As the losses get significant it shows that small things a little bit unvalued can be replaced and is accepted but once it gets heavily attached to the person the harder it gets which is undeniably called a disaster.

The art pertaining in the poem is the person itself which masters. We create our own art and happiness is given but even involves losing. An account of Elizabeth’s life was preserved throughout history. The relevance of her actual experiences writing the poem with prior knowledge on writing a standardized poem containing lines, stanzas, rhyme schemes and all those tools raised a unique form of literature. The authorial intent was to continue finding our self despite all the losing, bringing whether disaster or abloom of happiness. Elizabeth lived a disastrous life especially the time when she lost her mother and father which is reflected on the text itself. Success was ahead of Elizabeth bringing her story to life through writing and sharing the art of losing for Elizabeth Bishop.