Task:

• Your Name: Akane, Grace, Madison, Natalie
• Title & Author of the Piece: "One Art" by Elizabeth Bishop
• Topic: losing things/loss/grief
• Task to Accomplish: analyze tone shifts of this poem and how the form of poetry reinforces these shifts

Opening Shot:

• What is happening in the first few lines? introduces her stance on loss, gives examples of small losses to reinforce her statement that "the art of losing isn't too hard to master"
• What is your first impression of the speaker's TONE? her tone seems flippant, lighthearted
• What is your evidence from the text? phrases such as "doesn't matter" and "their loss is no disaster" makes her seem careless about the objects that she has lost
• What are your observations about the speaker or situation based on the TONE and evidence? She has lost many things. She seems a little lonely.

Shift #1:

• Describe the shift in FOCUS, TONE, or BOTH shifts to an urgent tone and subject shifts to losing more personal things
• Techniques/devices used to achieve this shift:  Anaphora-speeds up reading of the poem contributing to the tone shift to urgent. Exclamation point also makes her sound more urgent. Change in focus by talking about her mother's watch and her "loved houses"
• Evidence: "losing farther, losing faster"; "And look!"
• Observations: intensity of her feelings towards loss are increased in this shift; urgency parallels feeling of urgency when we lose something for real

Shift #2:

• Describe the shift in FOCUS, TONE, or BOTH tone shifts from urgent to resigned; subject shifts from losing smaller objects to losing whole cities
• Techniques/devices used to achieve this shift; clarifiers such as "I miss them" reinforce the feeling of resignation as she has accepted her loss; her examples get larger b/c she moves from losing cities to rivers to a whole continent building the intensity of the loss.
• Evidence: "I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster"
• Observations: audience begins to see that loss isn't as easy to master as the author originally made it seem; she demonstrates that loss has affected her

So What?:

• Describe the shift in FOCUS, TONE, or BOTH tone shifts from resigned to wistful; subject shifts from losing inanimate objects to losing a person
• Techniques/devices used to achieve this shift: shifts from tercets to a quatrain, this emphasizes the shifts in tone and concludes the poem; she modifies refrain #1 which she had consistently repeated to qualify her original statement that loss wasn’t hard; word choice makes it evident that she misses the person she lost
• Evidence: “losing’s not too hard to master”; “gestures I love”
• Observations: poem reaches its peak in intensity b/c the author admits that she is having a hard time getting over the loss of a loved one; Ironic that she can master the art of losing small things, but when it comes to big things, she never really got over the loss, she just deceives herself into believing it.