One Art
Elizabeth Bishop
(Poem 146 in your booklet)
Elizabeth Bishop
SIFT
• S = losing things – from small, material, insignificant things such as
watches/keys, to losing someone you love – mastering the art of losing
things. Avoiding the ‘disaster’.
• I = Not be flustered about losing material items, trying to cover up
/deny her true feelings of loss/disaster of losing a loved one – attempts
to compare losing a loved one to losing items, belies the truth that it is
difficult and disastrous to lose someone. No matter how much you try
to prepare, you can’t be prepared for losing someone significant –
effect on readers is to make us consider the importance of loved ones?
Re-consider attachments to material items and things of true
significance. The poet herself is trying to come to terms with a loss –
the progression of things being lost culminates in losing a loved one –
and has, in some small way, prepared her for this moment. Items or
things of value – keys, watches, houses, rivers, places, people.
• F = Villanelle – 6 even stanzas, extra line in the 6th, line 1 is repeated in
stanza 2, 4 and 6.
• T = Rhyme and repetition –
“master/disaster/fluster/faster/vaster/gesture”, “the art of losing..”, “I
lost..” – Alliteration in stanza 3, line 1. Personification in stanza 1, line 2
and 3 “filled with the intent”. Enjambment – stanza 6, lines 1&2.
Brackets or parentheses, “(the joking voice..). Imperative –”Write it!”.
Listing in stanza 3 “places, and names..” and stanza 5
Key Words
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•
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Villanelle
Tercet
Quatrain
Rhyme
Refrain (repetition of lines)
• Elizabeth Bishop (8 February 1911 – 6 October 1979) was an American poet. Elizabeth Bishop was
born in Worcester, Massachusetts. After her father, a successful builder, died when she was eight
months old, Bishop’s mother became mentally ill and was institutionalized in 1916. (Bishop wrote
about the time of her mother's struggles in her short story "In The Village.") Effectively orphaned
during her very early childhood, she lived with her grandparents on a farm in Nova Scotia, a period
she also referenced in her writing. Bishop's mother remained in an asylum until her death in 1934,
and the two were never reunited.
• Later in childhood, Bishop's paternal family gained custody, and she was removed
from the care of her grandparents and moved in with her father's much wealthier
family in Worcester, Massachusetts. However, Bishop was very unhappy in
Worcester, and her separation from her grandparents made her very lonely. While
she was living in Worcester, she developed chronic asthma, from which she
suffered for the rest of her life. Her time in Worcester is briefly chronicled in her
poem "In The Waiting Room."
• Bishop was greatly influenced by the poet Marianne Moore to whom she was
introduced by a librarian at Vassar in 1934. Moore took a keen interest in Bishop’s
work, and at one point Moore dissuaded Bishop from attending Cornell Medical
School, in which the poet had briefly enrolled herself after moving to New York City
following her Vassar graduation. It was four years before Bishop addressed ‘Dear
Miss Moore’ as ‘Dear Marianne,’ and only then at the elder poet’s invitation. The
friendship between the two women, memorialized by an extensive correspondence
(see One Art), endured until Moore's death in 1972. Bishop's "At the Fishhouses"
(1955) contains allusions on several levels to Moore's 1924 poem "A Grave." [6]
Background of author
Background of author
• She was introduced to Robert Lowell by Randall Jarrell in 1947 and they became
great friends, mostly through their written correspondence, until Lowell's death
in 1977. After his death, she wrote, "our friendship, [which was] often kept alive
through years of separation only by letters, remained constant and affectionate,
and I shall always be deeply grateful for it". They also both influenced each
other's poetry. Lowell cited Bishop's influence on his poem "Skunk Hour" which
he said, "[was] modeled on Miss Bishop's 'The Armadillo.'" Also, his poem "The
Scream" is "derived from...Bishop's story In the Village." "North Haven," one of
the last poems she published during her lifetime, was written in memory of
Lowell in 1978. Another famous writer with whom she corresponded frequently
was Flannery O'Connor.
• Although Elizabeth Bishop was involved in romantic relationships with women,
she did not write about her personal life or her sexual orientation in her poetry
and did not see herself as a "lesbian poet" or as a "female poet." She only
wanted to be judged based on the quality of her writing and not on her gender or
sexual orientation
Proclaiming ironically how easy it is to master the art of losing,
Bishop's speaker asserts that it just takes practice and then
catalogues all the things she has lost.
• Elizabeth Bishop’s “One Art” is a villanelle, with the traditional five
tercets and one quatrain; it features the usual two rhymes and two
refrains. The two rhymes are “master” and “intent”; the poet
demonstrates some skilful innovation as she employs “last, or” to
rhyme with “master” in the fourth tercet, and “gesture” to off-rhyme
with “master” in the quatrain.
• The speaker demonstrates irony throughout the poem. Even the
minor things she has lost such as “door keys” are not really easy to
lose. She is obviously trying to assuage the pain of loss as she
dramatizes her little lesson instructing others on how to improve
their practice of the art of losing.
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 things 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.
-Event 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.
Analyse these features
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
Use of villanelle form
Caesura and enjambment
Parentheses
Hyphen in the final stanza
Exclamation mark
The meter – iambic pentameter
Length of lines
The half or irregular rhymes
The voice of the persona
The tone of the poem
The relationship of each stanza – the structure and
development of ideas – beginning with things seeming to
have an ‘intent’ to get lost, lost keys, places, “my mother’s
watch”, houses then cities and “continents” and finally
“you”.
First Tercet: “The art of losing isn't hard
to master”
• The speaker creates a new art by claiming that “losing” is “one
art” that “isn’t hard to master.” She follows her claim by
asserting that the many things that can be lost are simply
intended to be lost. Because of this native intent, losing the
things “is no disaster.”
Second Tercet: “Lose something every
day. Accept the fluster”
• In the second tercet, the speaker tells her listener/student to
practice losing things: “Lose something every day.” With their
loss, they will learn to “accept the fluster / of lost door keys.”
She admits that the loss of keys will cause one to spend “the
hour badly.” But such a loss is a mere nuisance, so the listener
can agree that losing keys is not a disaster and perhaps “The
art of losing isn’t” after all “hard to master.”
Third Tercet: “Then practice losing
farther, losing faster”
• Continuing her instruction in losing things, the speaker advises
her listener/student to expand the practice by “losing farther,
losing faster.” She then suggests things that the student
practice losing “farther” and “faster”: “places, and names, and
where it was you meant / to travel.” These things obviously
present a more grave loss than the loss of door keys. But with
practice the student will realize that losing even these things
“will bring [no] disaster.”
Fourth Tercet: “I lost my mother's watch.
And look! my last, or”
• The speaker then turns to the things she has lost: she lost her
“mother’s watch”—losing an heirloom would naturally cause
great pain, as well as losing the “three loved houses,” but with
practice of the “art of losing,” that pain can be diminished.
Fifth Tercet: “I lost two cities, lovely ones.
And, vaster”
• The speaker then lists further things she has personally lost:
“two cities,” “some realms,” “two rivers,” and “a continent.” Of
course, she is speaking figuratively here. She did not literally
own cities, rivers, and a continent. She means that she no
longer has a relationship with these places. Still their loss,
because of her diligent practice, is not “a disaster.”
Quatrain: “--Even losing you (the joking
voice, a gesture”
• In the quatrain, the reader learns that the speaker has been
addressing a lost love. She has lost someone for whom she cared
deeply, someone who had “a joking voice” which held “a gesture” she
adored in that person’s personality.
• Still again, she insists that because “losing” is just one art and one
that can be perfected, losing her beloved has been mastered just as
losing other things has been.
• But she stumbles in writing the last line; she has to command her self
to say that losing her lover just seems like a disaster—(Write it!)—
because she clearly feels that that loss is, in fact, a disaster.
Here is another, much lighter villanelle by a more
contemporary poet, Sondra Ball. Her subject is the
villanelle itself, and the form is strictly adhered to,
though she does allow herself some irregular
rhymes:
Musical and sweet, the villanelle,
like light reflected in a gentle rhyme,
moves to the ringing of a silver bell,
It never arcs into the sharp loud yell
of vast pipe organs. Soft its climb.
Musical and sweet, the villanelle,
its form creating soft and tender
spells.
Like the singing of distant silver
chimes,
musical and sweet, the villanelle
like a tiny and translucent shell
catching sunlight in the summer time,
moves to the ringing of a silver bell.
flows through the heart, and builds a
magic spell
from sunlight and from shadows, and,
sublime,
moves to the ringing of a silver bell.
Soft and gentle, tender and so frail,
like light pouring through petals of the
lime,
musical and sweet, the villanelle
moves to the ringing of a silver bell.
This hardy and flexible poetic form has had a resurgence in the last hundred
years. Probably the best of the poems produced during this time is Dylan
Thomas's reflection on the death of his father, Do Not Go Gentle into That
Good Night. And for good measure it's probably one of the best poems of the
twentieth century of any kind, period:
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage, against the dying of the light.
Though Wise men at their end know dark is
right,
Because their words had forked no lightning
they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how
bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a
green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in
flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its
way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with
blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be
gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I
pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
• Contemporary poets have not limited themselves to the
pastoral themes originally expressed by the free-form
villanelles of the Renaissance, and have loosened the fixed
form to allow variations on the refrains. Elizabeth Bishop’s
"One Art" is another well-known example; other poets who
have penned villanelles include W. H. Auden, Oscar Wilde,
Seamus Heany, David Shapiro, and Sylvia Plath.
Essay
• Bishop chooses a rigid form of poetry to present her grief at
losing a loved one.
• The tone of voice employed by Bishop betrays the deep sense
of loss her persona feels.