One Art(s)

book design, 2018, FIT

Elizabeth Bishop is one of the most celebrated poets of the twentieth century. “One Art,” her masterful guide to a life of losing was written over the course of many months and many drafts. While these drafts have been previously published in Alice Quinn’s 2006 collection of unpublished Bishop works, Edgar Allan Poe & The Juke-Box, a closer analytical deconstruction of these variations allows one to truly appreciate Bishop’s skillful—and often obsessive—approach to revision.

Selected stanzas from several One Art(s) drafts are presented individually and shown in three stages of revision. The numerals underneath each stanza indicate the draft in which the text above is found. The opaque pages that precede each piece of the poem overlay Bishop’s own revision marks in pink. The text beneath has been edited for its misspellings, but is represented otherwise as it was originally written.