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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. What is used for the first time in the poem's final stanza?

2. How many refrains does "One Art" contain?

3. Who is the author of "One Art"?

4. Which technique is used in the speaker's claim to have lost "some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent" (line 14)?

5. What does the second stanza suggest the "art" of losing consists of?

Short Essay Questions

1. What is the poem's dominant meter, and how is it regularly interrupted?

2. How does the speaker's diction increase the emotional stakes as the poem progresses?

3. Which two verb moods are used in "One Art," and where are they employed?

4. On the surface level, what is the main message of "One Art"?

5. Describe the form of "One Art."

6. What difference is there in the way the two refrain lines are repeated throughout the poem?

7. What are the refrains employed in "One Art"?

8. How does the change in stanza structure in the final stanza mimic the poem's changing meaning?

9. To whom is the parenthetical comment "(Write it!)" addressed in line 19, and how does this comment impact the reader's understanding of the poem?

10. How does the speaker arrange the examples of things that can be lost?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Bishop's "One Art" is considered to be an excellent example of the villanelle form--not because of her perfect adherence to the "rules" of the villanelle, but because the form is ideally suited to the messages she is trying to convey. Write an essay that explicates the poem's structure and shows why it is ideally suited to the poem's meaning.

Essay Topic 2

Write an essay that makes and defends a claim about irony in "One Art." Support your argument with both quoted and paraphrased evidence from the text.

Essay Topic 3

Write an essay that analyzes Bishop's use of linebreak in "One Art." Provide quoted examples, explain their effect, and connect these effects to the poem's overall meaning.

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 843 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample