Answer:
“One Art” explores the idea that nothing lasts and thus that loss is an inevitable part of life. In fact, the speaker claims that with practice people can learn to accept and even “master” the “art” of losing. The speaker doesn't actually seem to be as adept at this art as she claims, however, ultimately lingering on the details of a beloved person she fears losing in a way that suggests she hasn't mastered anything at all. In the end, “One Art” suggests that everything in life is transient, while also showing the struggle involved in coping with the grief that loss entails.
At first, the speaker evokes everyday losses readers can relate to. For example, most people have lost their keys or wasted an hour of time. The speaker also remarks that “so many things seem filled with the intent/to be lost,” emphasizing that the loss of many things is a natural part of life.
As the poem progresses, however, the losses the speaker invokes grow in scale. Whereas before the speaker talked about losing keys and hours, now she mentions losing abstract concepts—“places, and names, and where it was you meant to travel.” Essentially, she seems to be talking about the loss of experiences, memories, and future hopes and plans. She also loses items of emotional value, such as her mother's watch and “three loved houses.” The poem thus broadens the idea of loss, relating it to life changes that are inevitable with the passage of time.
Yet the speaker continues to describe these losses with the same casual tone, suggesting that even these major losses are manageable. It's as though those more mundane losses prepared the speaker for leaving bigger and bigger parts of life behind without spiraling into “disaster.”
Indeed, throughout the poem, the speaker argues that it is possible to “master” loss itself—that with practice, loss can feel less catastrophic. Even when it comes to such huge losses as the loss of “cities,” “realms,” or an entire “continent,” the speaker insists that “it wasn't a disaster.” This is implicitly because the speaker has “mastered” the “art of losing”; she accepts that everything is transient, and this allows her to take these losses in stride.
Yet the poem also shows the ongoing effort involved in coping with loss. Despite the speaker's detached tone, as the losses grow in scale it becomes harder to take the speaker at her word when she insists that loss is no big deal. In fact, the poem's repetition actually suggests that loss does feel like a disaster to the speaker, since it requires constant work on the speaker's part to claim otherwise. The speaker refers to phrases about mastering loss and loss not being a “disaster” so often that they feel like mantras the speaker needs to obsessively repeat to stave off grief.
The speaker also revises these refrains as the poem progresses: the claim “their loss is no disaster” changes to “none of these will bring disaster,” and then, “I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.” The poem's opening line and primary refrain, “the art of losing isn't hard to master,” also changes in the last stanza to “the art of losing's not too hard to master.” These revisions show the increasing effort on the speaker's part to hold the full grief of these losses at bay.
Finally, the speaker turns to the possible, future loss of a beloved “you.” In doing so, the speaker interrupts the poem's form, first through the parenthetical “(the joking voice, a gesture/I love),” which describes this beloved; and then with the speaker directing herself to “(Write it!),” which reveals the effort involved in sustaining the poem's form and control in the face of this imagined, overwhelming loss. These interruptions show the cracks in the speaker's façade. The loss of the beloved “you,” the poem implies, will be a disaster for the speaker, whatever she might say to the contrary.
Ultimately, then, the sense of grief and overwhelming loss implied at the poem’s ending sheds new light on the poem as a whole. Where before the repetition might have suggested that the speaker has mastered loss, it can now be read as representing the speaker's ongoing, daily work of coping with loss, suggesting that such work is never-ending.
