Nguyen

Huong Nguyen
Austin Daniels
EN 1113-06
December 2, 2014

Loss has always been a notion that can entail insurmountable sorrow. People, as
to protect themselves from the sufferings, learn to overlook the pain and find ways to
move on, to focus on a bigger picture. Elizabeth Bishop, one of the most important
American poets in the twentieth century, acknowledges this common coping mechanism,
and with her own share in the experiences, explains in her poem, One Art, the true
sentiments of loss that people tend to avoid and brush off. With the precise and
multilayered description of the physical world, and her somewhat abrupt changing
perspectives, Bishop beautifully transfers the nature of loss into a form of villanelle
where emotions are at first captured and impeded then finally break free from the
conformity, oozing out the true intense heartbreaking essence.
In the first three stanzas, Bishop introduces the art of losing that can be
mastered through practice. In a role of a mentor with years of exposure to real life,
Bishop, in an advisory tone similar to eat an apple a day, tells readers to Lose
something everyday. Accept the fluster of lost door keys, the hour badly spent (3-4), and
practice losing farther, losing faster (7). Her instruction is very technical and reaches to
a point that is somewhat impersonal, like a prescription of a doctor to a cold. Through
such an instruction, Bishop is trying to convey the notion that by practicing losing, from
small, inconsequential objects to somewhat more significant things like places and

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names, one can become acquainted with loss. Having suffered immense loss at an early
age, Bishop develops a great deal of experiences that help her establish a credible
perspective, emphasizing that no matter how difficult a loss may appear, people can
overcome it. Bishop writes One Art in villanelle, one of the strictest forms of poetry,
which helps to mold loss in a specific rigid structure, showing that when handled with
control, loss wont pose as a threat to ones state of mind. The saying The art of losing
isnt hard to master and the idea that loss wont bring any disaster are both introduced in
the first stanza and then repeated in the next two. It, therefore, further enhances the
seemingly malleable nature of loss.
The initial picture that Bishop paints about loss is straightforward and reassuring,
however, the subtle changes in the next two stanzas, the fourth and fifth one, make the
readers begin to wonder if loss is actually that easy to control. Bishop changes her tone,
from technical and impersonal to anecdotal, when she starts to recite the loss that shes
encountered, her mothers watch (line 10), houses (11), two cities (13), realms, rivers,
and continents. It is a long list of the things that Bishop lost, and although there is no
special identifications of those objects, the readers can still feel Bishops grief and
longing towards what was once hers through the way she briefly describes each thing as
loved, and lovely. In these two stanzas, Bishop still strictly follows the rigid
villanelle form, with the precise rhyming went and continent, master and disaster.
While pertaining to such an ordered and controlled structure, Bishop still cannot stop
some of her emotions from breaking loose, finding their place in I miss them (16), but
she then quickly gains back control by stating but it wasnt a disaster. It is like a mini-

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breakdown and although order is quickly established, Bishops at first credible statement
on a benign nature of loss is starting to lose its credibility.
Although the intensity of the loss that Bishops encountered has been increasing
from small things filled with the intent to be loss to things that she must have worked
very hard for like realms and continents, it is still incomparable to you, as she sets
up a whole stanza for that person. It is also this stanza, the last one, that disproves what
Bishop initially believes in the essence of loss, exposing the true vulnerable nature of
human when dealing with loss. Right from the beginning, Bishop already admits you
means the most to her by saying Even losing you. This time, its not just lovely you
but you with the joking voice, the gesture I love. Bishops departure from the
calming, inattentive tone, and her abrupt turning away from general audience to just you
indicates how occupied she is with the persons image and how intense such impact of
losing you is when its always one the verge of disrupting Bishops. The fortress of
self-protection from the sorrow that loss brings crumbles as the seemingly rigid cover of
the villanelle form fails to contain the raging impact of loss. Bishops final attempt to
tame her own wild heart by saying The art of losings not too hard to master reveals her
own defeat; the perfect structure of villanelle ceases to exist, and noticing the
overwhelming victory of loss, Bishop concedes though it may seem like disaster.
One Art succeeds in perfectly conveying what people tend to do when facing
loss, and how in the end, despite no matter what is done, concession to the sorrow it
brings is inevitable. Bishop skillfully uses the villanelle poetry form to manifest the
powerful sentiment of loss that people tend to avoid. With simple yet thought-provoking
descriptive skills, Bishop establishes not a solution, but just her personal take on the true

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meaning of losing the things one loves, how even the most intense depth of denial can
never completely erase the trace of what once were ever so important.