Summary
At the start of the fourth stanza, the speaker abruptly pivots to a first-personal voice. They use their own experiences to give examples of loss, repeatedly arguing that these personal losses are no more or less difficult to master than any others. First, they tell us, they’ve lost a watch that belongs to their mother. Their phrasing leaves the context of this loss somewhat ambiguous, but it seems to imply that this watch was inherited from the mother following her death. After telling us about the watch, the speaker switches topics by exclaiming “and look!” as if to draw their listeners’ attention to the next item on the list: a house. This seems to be one of a few lost houses, because they describe it as “my last, or/next-to-last, of three loved houses.” After detailing this string of their own losses, though, the speaker swings right back to the severe advice they’ve been giving since the poem began, asserting once again that “the art of losing isn’t hard to master.”
Analysis
At this halfway point in the poem, an abrupt change takes place. Up until now, the speaker has maintained a strict distance from the topic of loss, approaching it as an instructor. Their evident intention has been to give advice, or even orders, to the person they’re addressing (who may be the poem’s reader and may be somebody else). Suddenly, though, it starts to look as if the speaker has been addressing themself, almost as if they’re trying to make themselves feel better about the various losses they face. At this point, however, the losses being enumerated are harder to dismiss. A mother’s watch doesn’t just sound like an expensive material object—it also sounds like an item with great sentimental value, and perhaps one that symbolizes the speaker’s entire relationship to their mother. And then there are the “three loved houses.” Not only do three houses actually seem like quite a big loss, but the little word “loved” completely alters the speaker’s self-presentation. Their facade of neutrality and toughness cracks with this incursion of emotion, and from this point on, it will be a lot harder for readers to believe the speaker’s claim that “The art of losing isn’t hard to master.”
Another one-syllable, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it verb, “went,” pulls a disproportionate amount of weight in this stanza—especially when juxtaposed with “loved.” Rather than use a dramatic, active verb, like “disappeared,” Bishop uses one with as little dramatic flair as possible. “Went” lacks vividness, doesn’t convey a specific image, and is sonically brief and quiet. Why use this word, when poets so often strain to pick lively and vivid verbs? We can understand this diction as a choice on the speaker’s part to make the loss of the “three loved houses” appear less impactful. After all, they’re trying to persuade us, or perhaps themself, that this loss is no big deal. It makes sense, therefore, to convey this particular loss without fanfare or drama.
There is another moment in this stanza that brings with it plenty of drama: the two-word sentence “And look!” It’s the first of two such two-word sentences in the poem, and these two sentences are also the only ones in “One Art” that make use of an exclamation point. Here, there’s no mistaking the speaker’s intention. They’re using all the tools they have to make the case that loss isn’t hard to master. This “And look!” is wedged between the revelation about the mother’s watch and the memory of the lost houses, so we can think of it as the speaker grabbing us by the hand and turning us to look at yet another example of the losses they’ve survived. This speaker seems to grow more vehement, even as their claims grow harder to believe.
