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“One Art” Introduction
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“One Art” was written by the American poet Elizabeth Bishop. The poem is a villanelle, a traditional form that involves a fixed number of lines and stanzas and an intricate pattern of repetition and rhyme. Through this form, the poem explores loss as an inevitable part of life. The speaker considers what it means to experience loss over and over again, and whether it is truly possible to “master” the experience of loss and grief. “One Art” was included in Bishop’s final collection of poetry, Geography III, which was published in 1976.
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“One Art” Summary
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It’s not difficult to become an expert at losing things. So many things seem bound to be lost sooner or later that when they actually are lost, it’s not a catastrophe.
To get better at losing, try losing something every day. Accept the frustration of losing your house keys, or realizing you’ve wasted an hour of time. It’s not difficult to become an expert at losing things.
After this, practice losing more, and more quickly: forget places and names of people or things; lose track of where you’d intended to travel. None of these losses will cause a catastrophe.
I lost the watch that had belonged to my mother. And think about this! I lost the last, or second-to-last, of the three houses I have loved the most. It’s not difficult to become an expert at losing things.
I lost two beautiful cities. And, even bigger than that, some vast domains that I owned, two rivers, and a continent. I miss them, but it wasn’t a catastrophe.
Even if I lose you—and in losing you, lose your teasing voice, and a gesture of yours that I love—this won’t have been a lie. It’s clear that it’s not too difficult to become an expert at losing things, though it may appear—write this down!—catastrophic.
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“One Art” Themes
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The Inevitability and Pain of Loss
“One Art” explores the idea that nothing lasts and thus that loss is an inevitable part of life. In fact, the speaker claims that with practice people can learn to accept and even "master" the "art" of losing. The speaker doesn’t actually seem to be as adept at this art as she claims, however, ultimately lingering on the details of a beloved person she fears losing in a way that suggests she hasn’t mastered anything at all. In the end, “One Art” suggests that everything in life is transient, while also showing the struggle involved in coping with the grief that loss entails.
At first, the speaker evokes everyday losses readers can relate to. For example, most people have lost their keys or wasted an hour of time. The speaker also remarks that “so many things seem filled with the intent / to be lost,” emphasizing that the loss of many things is a natural part of life.
As the poem progresses, however, the losses the speaker invokes grow in scale. Whereas before the speaker talked about losing keys and hours, now she mentions losing abstract concepts—“places, and names, and where it was you meant to travel.” Essentially, she seems to be talking about the loss of experiences, memories, and future hopes and plans. She also loses items of emotional value, such as her mother’s watch and “three loved houses.” The poem thus broadens the idea of loss, relating it to life changes that are inevitable with the passage of time.
Yet the speaker continues to describe these losses with the same casual tone, suggesting that even these major losses are manageable. It’s as though those more mundane losses prepared the speaker for leaving bigger and bigger parts of life behind without spiraling into “disaster.”
Indeed, throughout the poem, the speaker argues that it is possible to “master” loss itself—that with practice, loss can feel less catastrophic. Even when it comes to such huge losses as the loss of “cities,” “realms,” or an entire “continent,” the speaker insists that “it wasn’t a disaster.” This is implicitly because the speaker has “mastered” the “art of losing”; she accepts that everything is transient, and this allows her to take these losses in stride.
Yet the poem also shows the ongoing effort involved in coping with loss. Despite the speaker’s detached tone, as the losses grow in scale it becomes harder to take the speaker at her word when she insists that loss is no big deal. In fact, the poem’s repetition actually suggests that loss does feel like a disaster to the speaker, since it requires constant work on the speaker’s part to claim otherwise. The speaker refers to phrases about mastering loss and loss not being a “disaster” so often that they feel like mantras the speaker needs to obsessively repeat to stave off grief.
The speaker also revises these refrains as the poem progresses: the claim "their loss is no disaster" changes to "[n]one of these will bring disaster," and then, "I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster." The poem's opening line and primary refrain, “[t]he art of losing isn’t hard to master,” also changes in the last stanza to “the art of losing’s not too hard to master.” These revisions show the increasing effort on the speaker’s part to hold the full grief of these losses at bay.
Finally, the speaker turns to the possible, future loss of a beloved “you.” In doing so, the speaker interrupts the poem’s form, first through the parenthetical “(the joking voice, a gesture / I love),” which describes this beloved; and then with the speaker directing herself to “(Write it!)," which reveals the effort involved in sustaining the poem’s form and control in the face of this imagined, overwhelming loss. These interruptions show the cracks in the speaker’s façade. The loss of the beloved “you,” the poem implies, will be a disaster for the speaker, whatever she might say to the contrary.
Ultimately, then, the sense of grief and overwhelming loss implied at the poem’s ending sheds new light on the poem as a whole. Where before the repetition might have suggested that the speaker has mastered loss, it can now be read as representing the speaker’s ongoing, daily work of coping with loss, suggesting that such work is never-ending.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 1-19
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “One Art”
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Line 1
The art of ... hard to master;
The title of the poem lets the reader know that the poem’s subject will be “one art”—implying that the “art” the poem will examine is one of many. Readers might expect this “art” to be a traditional kind of fine art such as painting or poetry. Yet, as the first line makes clear, what the poem will actually explore is “the art of losing.”
While this opening line sounds straightforward and direct—“The art of losing isn’t hard to master,” the speaker says—in fact this line, which will become the poem’s refrain, contains layers of meaning.
First, it is worth noting that the speaker describes the experience of losing—of going through loss, and living with loss—as an “art.” This suggests that one can learn to deal with loss in the same way one might learn another craft or art such as painting, poetry, or music. While the poem makes it clear that its subject is the art of losing, the word “art” also implicitly connects the poem’s subject to other kinds of art, including the art of poetry and the poem itself. From the beginning, then, the poem subtly connects the art it will examine with its own artfulness, implying that one way the speaker has “mastered” loss—or attempted to master loss—is through writing the poem itself.
The word “master” is also important. Traditionally, the word has been used in connection with the fine arts; the term “Old Masters,” for example, refer to Classical painters and artists such as Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, who are considered “masters,” or experts and virtuosos, in their craft. This word, then, sustains the idea that the “art of losing” that the poem will explore is connected to other kinds of art—and that the work involved in “mastering” loss, just like the work involved in mastering any fine art, involves practice, discipline, and skill.
The opening line is also an aphorism, a remark that seems to convey a general truth about the world. On the surface, the speaker appears simply to be recounting this truth, suggesting that it’s not that hard to get used to or even become an expert at losing things. The speaker’s tone, which is confident and casual, reinforces the sense that this is an unquestionable fact.
At the same time, though, the reader might, even this early in the poem, start to ask questions. Is it really that easy to go through loss? Furthermore, if it isn’t hard to get used to losing things, then why write an entire poem about it? The aphorism at the poem’s beginning then, sets up a kind of double meaning in the poem: the speaker asserts that it’s not too hard to “master” loss, yet something else seems to move beneath the poem’s surface.
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Lines 2-3
so many things ...
... is no disaster.
Unlock all 603 words of this analysis of Lines 2-3 of “One Art,” and get the Line-by-Line Analysis for every poem we cover.
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Lines 4-6
Lose something every ...
... hard to master. -
Lines 7-9
Then practice losing ...
... will bring disaster. -
Lines 10-12
I lost my ...
... hard to master. -
Lines 13-15
I lost two ...
... wasn’t a disaster. -
Lines 16-17
—Even losing you ...
... shan’t have lied. -
Lines 17-19
It’s evident ...
... it!) like disaster.
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“One Art” Symbols
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The Watch
In the fourth stanza of “One Art,” the speaker says, “I lost my mother’s watch.” It seems that the speaker is talking, here, quite literally; she means that she actually lost the watch that had belonged to her mother, an heirloom of emotional value.
Yet watches are also often symbolic: they represent time and the passage of time. They can also symbolize logic, stability, and reason. With all of the losses the speaker has undergone, the poem implies that at some level, she has lost a sense of steadfastness, stability, and longevity, instead having to acclimate to another “logic” of constant loss and grief.
Additionally, the word “watch” has multiple meanings. It can refer to an object—a watch—but it also can be a verb, in the sense of someone “watching over” another person. This also contributes to the symbolic presence of the watch in the poem. As a child, Bishop had lost her mother literally and figuratively; her mother suffered a series of breakdowns and was committed to an institution when Bishop was five—she never saw her mother again. She may have lost, then, her mother’s physical watch, but she also lost her mother’s care and guardianship.
In the context of a poem that is overall concrete and direct, the presence of this symbol has even more meaning, suggesting that despite the speaker’s casual, almost dismissive tone, even those earlier losses recounted in the poem are losses of life-changing proportions.
Where this symbol appears in the poem:- Line 10: “I lost my mother’s watch.”
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“One Art” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Aphorism
In “One Art,” the speaker repeats the line “The art of losing isn’t hard to master.” This line can be read as an aphorism, since it seeks to express a general truth about the world or about human experience. Through the poem, the speaker goes on to “prove” this aphorism by describing losses she has experienced and insisting, again and again, that they haven’t been a “disaster.”
The poem’s use of this aphorism has several effects. First, since the line sounds like a general, indisputable truth, the speaker’s repetition of it imbues the poem with authority. The speaker sounds confident and sure of herself, and the reader might—at least at first—take the aphorism at face value, assuming that it is true and logical since it sounds true and logical.
At the same time, aphorisms often oversimplify human realities. They are pithy and concise by nature, but this also means that they often leave out a lot in what they express.
In this case, the line “The art of losing isn’t hard to master” certainly seems to oversimplify the experiences of loss. And, as the poem progresses, the line sounds reductive to the point of being unbelievable, since the losses the speaker evokes grow bigger and bigger. By the end of the poem, in fact, it appears that the reverse of the line is true, as it seems unlikely that the speaker can truly “master” the loss of this beloved “you.” The speaker emphasizes this in the poem’s penultimate line, when she changes the aphorism to “the art of losing’s not too hard to master."
Ultimately, the aphorism works as key part of the poem’s irony. As the speaker repeats this phrase again and again, it sounds less like an actual general truth, and more like a claim the speaker is asserting and repeating herself to try to convince herself of its truth. This creates a powerful tension in the poem between what the speaker claims about loss—that it is not such a big deal—and what the poem shows about loss, which is how truly devastating and painful it can be for the person experiencing it.
Where aphorism appears in the poem:- Line 1: “The art of losing isn’t hard to master;”
- Line 6: “The art of losing isn’t hard to master.”
- Line 12: “The art of losing isn’t hard to master.”
- Line 18: “the art of losing’s not too hard to master”
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Repetition
Unlock all 417 words of this analysis of Repetition in “One Art,” and get the poetic device analyses for every poem we cover.
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Polyptoton
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End-Stopped Line
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Enjambment
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Asyndeton
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Irony
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Alliteration
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Consonance
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Assonance
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“One Art” Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Master
- Intent
- Fluster
- Vaster
- Realms
- Gesture
- Shan't
Master-
(Location in poem: Line 1: “master;”; Line 6: “master.”; Line 12: “master.”; Line 18: “master”)
To "master" something means to become an expert or virtuoso in it; for example, painters like Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci are considered "masters" in the art of painting. The word can also mean to overcome something, as when someone says that they have "mastered" their fears. Both meaning are relevant in "One Art"; the speaker implies that it is possible to overcome or gain a degree of control over loss. At the same time, through referring to the "art of losing," she implicitly connects "mastery" over loss to artistic mastery and skill.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “One Art”
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Form
“One Art” is a villanelle. This traditional form, which dates back to the Renaissance, includes a structure of five tercets (three-line stanzas) followed by a closing quatrain (a four-line stanza). A villanelle also contains two refrains:
- The first and third lines of the first stanza are supposed to repeat, alternating, as the closing lines of the stanzas that follow.
- The poem then ends with both of these refrains as its last two lines.
Additionally:
- The first lines of stanzas 2-6 are supposed to rhyme, in their line endings, with the refrains.
- The middle lines of each tercet are supposed to rhyme with a sound that is different from the rhyming sound of the refrains.
We go into more depth on the rhyme scheme in the corresponding section of the guide. Here, let's focus on how “One Art” both adheres to, and, in crucial ways, diverges from the villanelle more broadly. First, here's how it fits the form:
- The poem is indeed written in five tercets and has an ending quatrain.
- It opens with a refrain—"The art of losing isn’t hard to master"—that repeats in stanzas 2, 4, and 6.
- It contains a second repeating word, “disaster,” which appears in the alternate stanzas, and both “refrains” repeat in the last two lines of the poem.
- There is a separate rhyme sound at the middle of each tercet (“intent,” “spent,” “meant,” “went,” “continent,” “evident”).
- Finally, the first lines of stanzas 2-6 end with words that are close, or slant rhymes, to the refrain.
The poem’s adherence to the form conveys what the speaker describes, suggesting that the speaker has, in fact, mastered loss, since she is able to bring all of these experiences within the tight control of the poem.
Yet the poem’s divergences from its form are equally important to its meaning. A villanelle is supposed to repeat its refrains exactly. It is worth noting, then, that the poem’s opening line, “The art of losing isn’t hard to master,” is repeated exactly until its final iteration, when it changes to, “the art of losing’s not too hard to master.” This slight shift reveals a slippage in the speaker’s apparent control, suggesting that she hasn’t “mastered” loss as much as she claims.
The poem also includes changes in its second refrain. The third line of the opening stanza is “to be lost that their loss is no disaster”; technically, according to the form, this line should repeat exactly in the alternating stanzas that follow. Yet here, the line changes to “None of these will bring disaster,” then, “I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster,” and finally, “though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.” These changes show that despite what the speaker insists about having mastered loss, in fact, each loss requires effort and work on the speaker’s part to cope with it. The villanelle form, then, enacts both the speaker’s attempts to master loss and grief and the struggle involved in doing so, suggesting that this struggle is ongoing.
Additionally, “One Art” has been read as working in the mode of an Ars Poetica, or a poem written about the art of poetry. The title, “One Art,” connects the art the poem examines—the “art of losing”—to other arts, including poetry and the artfulness of the poem itself. Then, at the end of the poem, the speaker directs herself to “Write it!”—pointing to her own act of writing at the moment when she struggles to accept this final, potential, devastating loss of the beloved "you." This final command implies that for the speaker, writing might be some form of mastery—if she can write it down, the poem suggests, it isn’t truly a disaster.
As an Ars Poetica, then, the poem can be read as connecting the idea of “mastering loss” to mastery in the craft of writing, suggesting that writing might be one way to cope with loss. But just like the “art of losing,” which the poem implies must be learned and re-learned over time, the poem suggests that the craft of writing must be constantly practiced and honed, if it is to help one deal with what is most difficult in one’s life.
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Meter
“One Art” is written in loose iambic pentameter. Iambic pentameter is a type of meter in which each line has five metrical feet known as iambs; each iamb contains two syllables, the first being unstressed and the second stressed. For example, consider the second line of the poem:
so many things seem filled with the intent
The line contains a total of 10 syllables, alternating between unstressed and stressed beats.
Iambic pentameter is the traditional meter of Shakespearean sonnets and classical poetry. The poem’s use of this meter—or perhaps what could be called its allusion to the meter, since its use of the meter is “loose,” or inexact—connects the poem to this tradition and imbues “One Art” with authority and weight.
At the same time, the poem also diverges from the meter. For example, the first line of the poem reads:
The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
This line sounds like iambic pentameter, because it is made out of feet that begin with unstressed and end with stressed syllables. However, in this case the line exceeds the pentameter length, as there is an extra, unstressed syllable at the end of the line. This is called a feminine ending. Because many of the rhyme sounds in the poem end with some variation of "aster," these feminine endings appear throughout in the first and third lines of each stanza. Take line 4:
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
There are also lines that interrupt the iambic pattern altogether. Consider, for instance, line 14:
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
Though it is possible to read degrees of stress differently here, this line clearly contains a different pattern. Such interruptions to the poem’s iambic pattern make the poem sound natural and immediate, as though the speaker is addressing the reader directly in conversation. They also subtly enact the underlying tension in the poem, between the control of the form—and the “mastery” that this control implies—and the speaker’s ongoing struggle to assert this control in the face of such overwhelming loss.
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Rhyme Scheme
“One Art” follows the rhyme scheme of a villanelle. It has two rhyming refrains: “The art of losing isn’t hard to master,” and the word “disaster.” (See the section on Form for how the poem both adheres to and diverges from a villanelle’s traditional use of refrains.) These refrains are typically referred to as A1 and A2 when analyzing a villanelle.
The first lines of stanzas 2-6 rhyme with those refrains. And the middle line of each tercet, as well as the second line of the closing quatrain, rhyme with each other, with a different rhyming sound than that of the refrains. The closing quatrain then ends with the two refrains.
The rhyme scheme of the poem, then can be mapped like this, wherein A1 and A2 refer to the poem's refrains, "a" refers to the lines that rhyme with those refrains, and "b" refers to lines that appear in the middle of each stanza and rhyme with each other:
A1 b A2 / a b A1 / a b A2 / a b A1 / a b A2 / a b A1 A2.
For the most part, the poem is strict in its rhyme scheme. The two refrain words “master” and “disaster” rhyme with each other. And the last words of the middle lines of the tercets, as well as the second line of the closing quatrain, also rhyme: “intent,” “spent,” “meant,” “went,” “continent,” and “evident.” Additionally, the line endings of the first lines of stanzas 2-6, rhyme, for the most part, with the refrains: “faster,” “last, or,” and “vaster” can all be read as fairly straightforward rhymes with “master” and “disaster.”
It is notable, then, that the poem also resists this rhyme scheme. In stanza 2, the word “fluster” is close to rhyming with the refrains but is more like a slant rhyme. Similarly, the word “gesture” at the end of the poem echoes the rhymes with “master” and “disaster,” but also clearly diverges from them. This final divergence is especially notable, since it is the moment in the poem when the speaker imagines losing the beloved “you”; it is as though, at this point, this imagined loss breaks through the poem’s form and the speaker’s apparent control.
Throughout, then, the poem’s rhyme scheme is part of how it follows the form of the villanelle, enacting its own artistic mastery even as the speaker describes her own “mastery” of loss. Yet in these slight moments of shift away from the rhyme scheme, the poem reveals its underlying meaning, suggesting that ultimately, the loss of love and of another human being is not something that can truly be controlled or even “mastered,” but only lived with, day to day.
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“One Art” Speaker
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The speaker of “One Art” is anonymous within the poem. However, several elements of the poem suggest that the speaker is a representation of the poet, Elizabeth Bishop. (We've used female pronouns to refer to the speaker throughout this guide to reflect this interpretation, but do note that the poem itself never offers specific details about the speaker's identity.)
First, a number of the losses that the poem evokes match up with biographical details from Bishop’s own life. In fact, Bishop’s life was marked by loss from early childhood. Her father died when she was less than a year old, and her mother suffered a series of breakdowns and was institutionalized when Bishop was five. Bishop was sent to live with her maternal grandparents in Nova Scotia, and later with paternal relatives in Boston. By the time she was a teenager, then, Bishop had already lost both of her parents and multiple homes. The line that begins “I lost my mother’s watch”—which refers to a literal watch, but also, perhaps implicitly, to the speaker’s loss of her mother’s care and guardianship—and the reference to lost “places, and names” can be read as allusions to these experiences.
Later in the poem, the speaker’s remark that she has lost “some realms I owned, two rivers, [and] a continent” might seem hyperbolic, or even surreal. But these references again likely allude to experiences in Bishop’s life. For 15 years, Bishop lived in Brazil with her then-partner, the architect Lota de Macedo Soares. The couple’s relationship, however, eventually deteriorated, and Soares died by suicide in 1967. In losing this relationship, Bishop also lost her life in Brazil, which had become her home; in effect, she lost an entire “continent” and what she might have experienced as the magical “realms” of this place and her home there.
Finally, Bishop wrote the poem at a time when she feared she was going to lose her last partner, Alice Methfessel—with whom, in fact, she spent the rest of her life. The poem imagines this potential loss as a final, shattering loss of huge proportions.
In addition to these biographical details, it is also important that within “One Art,” the speaker refers to her own act of writing the poem. In the final line, the speaker directs herself to “Write it!” This command can be read as a moment of excruciating acceptance, the speaker forcing herself to acknowledge the potential loss of the beloved “you.” Yet it also powerfully shows the poet in the act of writing, connecting the poet, Bishop, with the speaker, and making the speaker’s experiences even more palpable, immediate, and present.
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“One Art” Setting
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The setting of “One Art” is notably nonspecific; the speaker never indicates where she is during the course of the poem. Some clues, such as the “door keys” and the reference to “an hour badly spent,” as well as the speaker’s casual, contemporary-sounding tone, indicate that she inhabits a present-day world with present-day concerns, yet the poem’s physical setting remains out of sight.
In keeping with the poem’s subject—loss—the settings that are evoked are settings that the speaker has lost: the “two cities, lovely ones,” as well as the “realms […] two rivers, a continent.” It seems that the settings that are most present and palpable to the speaker are those that she no longer inhabits, but those whose loss she grieves.
The poem also suggests that the speaker has moved, over the course of her life, through multiple other settings—including the “places” mentioned in stanza 3, and the “three loved houses” in stanza 4. This implies that the speaker has lived in and lost homes, places, and even whole “realms” that she once considered hers, and that, in essence, she has no setting that is truly her own.
Yet even these actual settings are not evoked with much detail. In fact, it is not a setting of time or place but the speaker’s beloved—the “you” who she fears losing at the poem’s end—that is ultimately described with the most specificity in the poem, through the modifying “the joking voice, a gesture I love.” This suggests that for the speaker, it doesn’t so much matter where she is now, as how she will cope with living in a world without this “you,” whose voice and gesture are evoked with such loving detail.
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Literary and Historical Context of “One Art”
Literary Context
“One Art” was included in Elizabeth Bishop’s final collection of poetry, Geography III. Bishop was a scrupulous writer, often spending months on drafts, and prior to Geography III she published only four other collections of poems: North & South (1946); A Cold Spring (1955); Questions of Travel (1965); and New and Uncollected Work (1969). She also published translations from the Portuguese and Spanish.
The time frame of Bishop’s career places her within the generation of Confessional poets. These poets, who included Bishop’s peers Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath, as well as her friend Robert Lowell, emphasized the personal in their poetry, often highlighting intense emotional and psychological experiences.
Bishop, however, was critical of this mode of writing, and resisted including such detailed or direct personal accounts in her poems. Though her poems draw on her life, they often do so with a degree of distance, and convey their feeling in indirect or ironic ways, as in “One Art.” Her speakers, too, are often coded; for example, “Crusoe in England” (another poem in Geography III) draws on Bishop’s loss of her home and relationship with Lota de Macedo Soares in Brazil. However, the poem recasts Bishop’s personal experience in the fictional character of Robinson Crusoe, who famously spent 28 years as a castaway on a remote island. “One Art,” too, is coded in certain ways, as the speaker describes her losses in such a way that they are both intensely personal and could be interpreted in a variety of ways.
As a collection, Geography III goes the furthest in Bishop’s work in the ways it draws on and articulates the experiences of her life. The book as a whole is considered the pinnacle of her work, in its precise, clear images and meticulous craft. Though in her life Bishop was less well known than Robert Lowell and others of her generation, she is now considered one of the great American poets of the 20th century—and a true master of her art.
Historical Context
Elizabeth Bishop was born in 1911 and died in 1979. Her life and career, then, spanned the middle part of the 20th century; she published her first book, North & South in 1946, and her last, Geography III, in 1976, just a few years before her death.
This time frame is relevant to Bishop’s work and to the reticence and restraint that critics often comment on in her poems. Although much of this restraint was an aesthetic choice—she rejected the overtly personal style of writing that predominated in Confessional poetry—it is also important to remember that Bishop was a woman, and a gay woman, writing at a time when gender and literary expectations for women were firmly entrenched.
To illustrate the ways in which these expectations might have been felt, consider The New Yorker, which published every poem Bishop sent them—except for her 1955 poem “The Shampoo,” a more open love poem for another woman, in which the speaker describes washing her lover’s hair. The coded quality of many of Bishop’s poems, then, can, in a certain sense, be understood to reflect some of these realities of her historical context.
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More “One Art” Resources
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External Resources
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The Bishop Archives at Vassar College — Elizabeth Bishop attended Vassar College and her papers are now stored in Vassar’s Special Collections. Visit the Vassar Archives & Special Collections website to learn more about Bishop’s papers stored at the library.
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Audio of “One Art” in Reaching for the Moon — A 2013 Brazilian film, Reaching for the Moon, explores Bishop’s life in Brazil and her relationship with the architect Lota de Macedo Soares. Although the movie misinterprets the poem “One Art” as about Bishop’s relationship with Soares—the poem was, in fact, about Bishop’s last partner, Alice Methfessel—the movie includes a recitation of the poem by the actress Miranda Otto, who played Bishop. In the scene, Bishop reads the poem to her friend Robert Lowell.
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Biography of Elizabeth Bishop — Learn more about the poet's life and work.
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The Drafts of “One Art” — Read more about Bishop’s writing process and how “One Art” changed over the course of 17 drafts in this essay at Modern American Poetry.
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"Elizabeth Bishop's Art of Losing" — Read this article from The New Yorker to learn more about Bishop’s life, including the circumstances that gave rise to the poem “One Art.”
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LitCharts on Other Poems by Elizabeth Bishop
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