Study Questions

"One Art"

General Questions

1. In this poem about "the art of losing" the speaker list several things that have been lost: switching between things closeby (daily matters, mother's watch, you) to the others which are "farther" away and lost at a greater speed ("faster"). With the listing of things, the meanings of "losing" gets richer and richer. What does it mean to "lose" places and names, two cities, two rivers and a continent? How do we own them in the first places?
   
2. Among the lost things on the other side, some are concrete possessions (e.g. keys and watch), but how about the rest (joking voice, gesture)? Put together, what do these lost things suggest about the "losing" the speaker discusses here?
   
3. Pay attention to the speaker's tone. She repeats "The art of losing isn't hard to master" several times, does she mean it all the time? What does the parenthetical expressions in the last stanza (e.g. "(Write it!)")

4. The handout you got has one word missing (accidentally). But you actually can figure out what it is if you find out the pattern of ryhmes. What do you think are the effects of this regular rhyme scheme? What do you think about the variation of the repeated line, the number of lines (from 3 to 4) and the rhymes?
   
5. What do you think are the effects of the alternation in this poem between open and long vowels (e.g. "losing"; "lost door keys, the hour badly spent";"--Even losing you" ) and short vowels and explosive sounds(Accept the fluster";"(the joking voice, a gesture/ I love)")?