One Art

How does the poet use repetition in the poem, One Art?

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Last updated by Jill W
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Bishop uses assonance and consonance, the repetition of vowel and consonant sounds, to provide movement to the recitation of the poem. For example, the speaker’s words seem to spill out with increasing speed when she says, “Then practice losing farther, losing faster” (7), and “I lost my mother’s watch. And look! My last, or / next-to-last, of three loved houses went" (10-11). Much of this movement is interrupted, however, in the final stanza, creating a sense of the speaker stumbling over her own words.

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One Art