Sign Inventory -Week 4- Elizabeth Bishop's "One Art"

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 things 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.

• Alternation of master/disaster at the end of each stanza
• ABA rhyming pattern
• Very formal, tight writing
• Repetition of "The art of losing isn't hard to master."
• The use of losing, loss, lost, losing's -- riffing off that one root word
• Parenthetical side notes, speaking outside of the poem to the reader.
• Strict syllabic format which mimics the ABA rhyming pattern -- 1st and 3rd line have 11 syllables and the 2nd line has 10