This document contains study notes on the following poems:
Seasons Come to Pass
One Art
In the Shadow of Signal Hill
The New Century of South African Poetry
Conversations
Voices of this Land
The Cape of Storms
Red Rover, Come Over
These poems are often used in the following modules at UNISA: ENG1501, ENG1502 and ENG2603
, One Art
The art of losing isn't hard to master; so
many things seem filled with the intent to
be lost that their loss is no disaster.
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or next-to-
last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.
– Even losing you (the joking voice, a
gesture I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster
One Art is a villanelle, consisting of five aba-rhyming tercets and one abaa-rhyming quatrain. The
villanelle is traditionally written in iambic pentameter, with five stresses or beats each line and an
average of ten syllables.
So the first line scans:
Seasons Come to Pass
One Art
In the Shadow of Signal Hill
The New Century of South African Poetry
Conversations
Voices of this Land
The Cape of Storms
Red Rover, Come Over
These poems are often used in the following modules at UNISA: ENG1501, ENG1502 and ENG2603
, One Art
The art of losing isn't hard to master; so
many things seem filled with the intent to
be lost that their loss is no disaster.
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or next-to-
last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.
– Even losing you (the joking voice, a
gesture I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster
One Art is a villanelle, consisting of five aba-rhyming tercets and one abaa-rhyming quatrain. The
villanelle is traditionally written in iambic pentameter, with five stresses or beats each line and an
average of ten syllables.
So the first line scans:
