One Art

“One Art” is a villanelle, meaning the poem is a closed form with set rules. Though adhering to most traditional villanelle guidelines, Bishop takes liberty with the form’s refrain at the end. Villanelles contain stanzas comprised of tercets (three-line stanzas) and a finishing quatrain (four-line stanza). There is also a strict rhyme scheme and there are repeating lines (refrains). The tercets, for instance, use an aba rhyming pattern, while the quatrain implements an abaa rhyming pattern (review the Literary Devices section for a comprehensive explanation with examples).

Bishop strikes a humorous tone early in the poem by mentioning losing items as insignificant: “so many things seem filled with the intent / to be lost that their loss is no disaster” (Lines 2-3). With these opening lines, Bishop places the fault on the items themselves and their “intent” in the disappearing. She bolsters her flippant tone with rhyme; “One Art” has a singsong quality juxtaposed with the serious nature of the poem’s subject.

Bishop continues the comical tone in the next stanza by suggesting readers try losing something every day to master loss. Stanza 2 takes the poem from general loss to specific, when Bishop mentions losing time and keys. Despite the lighthearted tone, the loss of time and keys—both symbols of movement—suggests the personal direction the deceptively funny poem will travel. The third stanza also includes specifics: Bishop loses “names” and “places” and “destinations,” and suggests quickly losing these things. The third stanza symbolizes how easily—and how quickly—people forget names and places and destinations as time goes by; items once central to everyday life can and will disappear with time.

With the fourth stanza, the poem turns deeply personal. Bishop admits she has lost “my mother’s watch” (Line 13) and a beloved house, and follows these revelations with the refrain, “The art of losing isn’t hard to master” (Line 15). By admitting she has mastered loss here, Bishop turns the poem on its head. Her mother’s watch may be a symbol for her mother—a woman who suffered from mental illness and who was not in Bishop’s life from the age of five onward. By losing a timepiece associated with her mother, Bishop loses the only symbolic time she had with her mother. This particular reference may also have to do with the idea that Bishop was no longer under her mother’s watch (or care) once her mother was institutionalized; it’s likely the double meaning was intentional.

Further, losing houses is symbolic of losing comfort and safety. With her careful use of form and precise language, however, the stanza doesn’t offer an emotional reaction to these losses. Bishop exacerbates these personal losses in the fifth stanza by alluding to losing a continent, and then in the final stanza with “—Even losing you […]” (Line 21). These references suggest her lover’s suicide in Brazil, where Bishop lived with Soares until she took her own life. Bishop returned to the US after Soares’s death, thus losing a continent.

The final stanza breaks from standard villanelle form by tweaking the refrain. This deliberate choice suggests Bishop’s ease with loss isn’t as artful or simple as she suggests. She forces herself to admit her losses thus far appear like “disaster” (Line 24), and she even includes a demand to herself—“(Write it!)”—in this last line. By considering the strict, tight villanelle form and Bishop’s light tone, “One Art” shows just how crafty people can be when suppressing emotion. The poem also suggests that losses, even difficult ones, are part of life. It’s how one handles the loss that determines whether its impact is disastrous. By choosing “One Art” as a title, Bishop merges poetry and loss into an artistic endeavor requiring constant practice and patience.