"One Art"

By Elizabeth Bishop

Elizabeth Bishop (1911 - 1979) was an award winning American poet, short story writer, and painter.

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.

This poem is a villanelle, which means that its first first and third line are repeated throughout the poem and at the poem’s end. You can read more about villanelles here or read history’s most famous villanelle, “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night” here.

But why does what type of poem “One Art” is matter? Sometimes a poem’s structure can enhance or influence its meaning. So does repeating the lines “loss is no disaster” and “the art of losing isn’t hard to master” affect the way we read them?

The speaker of the poem starts with this simple belief that loss isn’t the end of the world. Maybe there is even some good in it. We should “lose something everyday.” We should even lose our plans and our ambitions (“where it was we meant to travel”). We can survive loss. We can overcome loss. We can “master” loss. What does it mean to master loss? Perhaps that loss does not rob us of joy. Perhaps something else, but whatever it means to master loss, it is something we are capable of.

Then she takes her belief and starts to challenge it. What if you lose a family heirloom? Or a beloved house? Or a plot of land that brings you peace? Even still, “it wasn’t a disaster.” Even when we lose something that is good, we don’t have to be defined or destroyed by that loss. We can “master” it.

It’s a nice belief, and helpful as the speaker goes through hard times. But what happens when it is put to the ultimate test? In the last stanza, the speaker loses someone they love.

Take a moment to place yourself in the speakers shoes. You have had this core belief your whole life. It isn’t an easy belief but it has helped you. You have always thought it to be true. Now, in this moment, every emotion and sensation you have tells you that it isn’t. As far as you can feel, the exact opposite of your belief is true. In the speakers particular case, losing her beloved seems to be a complete disaster. It doesn’t seem to be something she can master. So what do you do?

Here is where I think the villanelle structure adds meaning to the poem. The structure says you repeat the line that you said before. But the speaker doesn’t want to. She doesn't want to believe what she used to believe. To her it “look[s] like” disaster. The parentheses reveal her inner monologue, where she has to force herself to “write it”. It doesn’t work with the poem’s rhythm, but I imagine her crying over a page, saying “Write it, just write it, dammit” as her hands are trembling.

So what do you do? When you know something is true, but everything you feel in that moment says otherwise. When your core beliefs are challenged by your present circumstances? What do you do?

Do you obey the villanelle and choose to believe that which you know is true but do not feel? Or do you stop the cycle of repetition?

In the end, the speaker does “write it.” But I am pretty sure there is a rough draft of this poem that ends without the last two words.