One Art

1. C. The first stanza humorously suggests that losing things happens so easily that “many things seem filled with the intent / to be lost" (Lines 2 and 3). In the second stanza, the speaker begins to refine the meaning of the “art of losing”: It is not just losing things but losing things artfully, or with controlled artifice that conceals fluster or despair.

2. D. In the first line of this stanza the speaker suggests that the reader “practice losing farther, losing faster” (Line 7). This suggests the inevitable movement away from once-familiar “places, and names” (Line 8) that seems to grow accelerated as the people, places, and potential plans we have left behind us accumulate through the ever more swiftly-moving years of adulthood.

3. A. Although Bishop does not fit neatly into the category of confessional poets like Sylvia Plath, her poetry often suggests a connection with her personal life. Just as the speaker in this poem refers to losing “a continent” (Line 14) and to losing someone clearly beloved (Line 16), Bishop left South America after she lost her Brazilian lover to death by suicide.

4. The speaker doesn’t care about these losses; or, the speaker has mastered the art of losing without reacting as if disaster has struck.