Disaster in Elizabeth Bishop’s One Art Essay -- One Art

Disaster in Elizabeth Bishops One subterfugeArt is not life. More, it is a deception, mirroring experience and emotion, but never in truth becoming that which it reflects. Art is attractive in that it is a controlled balance amid rigid structure, which is too mundane for its purposes, and chaotic discord, which is too feral. Poetry is art. breathing out is not. In her villanelle One Art, Elizabeth Bishop proves this to be so. The verse itself is an emotive crescendo, and while its utterer struggles to hold the pain of loss within the confines of art, its readers note the incongruousness of such an effort. One word prompts them, and fuels Bishops crescendo with a momentum, a tone, and a coda mishap impels the poem One Art.Fittingly, the crescendo begins softly. The poems opening stanza assumes a fairly impassive tone, which transpires from the speakers feigned indifference toward the prospect of losing. Though the immediate clash between Bishops title and its implication brief ly upsets the mind from a sensible standpoint, the speakers hasty assurance that loss is no disaster seem...