Point of View

In “One Art” Elizabeth Bishop writes primarily in the first person. While initially she seems to be speaking directly to the reader, it becomes evident as the poem proceeds that she is also speaking to herself. In the poem’s final stanza her audience shifts yet again when she directly addresses a lost love. While not stated explicitly, the poem’s point of view gives the impression that the speaker may be Bishop herself.

In the poem’s first three stanzas the speaker is unemotional and philosophical. She discusses various types of loss and suggests that the reader, “Lose something every day” (4). Here her pronouncements are objective and impersonal, never connecting the losses she mentions to herself.

In the fourth and fifth stanzas Bishop introduces the personal pronoun “I.” The speaker now reveals her own losses, personalizing the issue under discussion and intensifying the pace...