Edition

This is a teaching and learning edition of Elizabeth Bishop’s poem “One Art.” The edition shows the evolution of the poem across Bishop’s 16 drafts through parallel texts, highlighting revisions between drafts and using hypertext to explain revisions within drafts.

Each draft also contains hypertext reflection questions, linked to specific revisions. These questions are designed to help students understand the poetic logic behind Bishop’s editorial choices and to grapple with the qualities that make the final poem so masterful. As such, the edition may be used as a teaching tool to analyze this poem, and as a tool to learn about the characteristics of effective, powerful poetry more generally.