Bishop's One Art
The Art of Losing
Elizabeth Bishop’s “One Art” is a villanelle, with the traditional five tercets and one quatrain; it features the usual two rimes and two refrains. The two rimes are “master” and “intent”; the poet demonstrates some skillful innovation as she employs “last, or” to rime with “master” in the fourth tercet, and “gesture” to off-rime 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.
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.
Elizabeth Bishop
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