One Art; Villanelle Explication

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 everyday. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing further, 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.

--Elizabeth Bishop

  
     In the poem One Art, Bishop arranges what the Speaker lost in a form of importance – she goes from things like door keys, the time lost because of ‘hours badly spent’, a watch, and then onto houses, cities, continents, and loved ones. The first few lines, “so many things seem filled with the intent - to be lost that their loss is no disaster,” is almost making it seem like the things he loses all have the intent of being lost. Because the Speaker believes that his strayed possessions all want to be gone, he’s accepted it and is okay with it.
    “Lose something everyday. Accept the fluster - of lost door keys, the hour badly spent,” he admits that losing things are unsettling, but he just ‘accepts the fluster’. It’s ironic that Bishop places door keys and hours badly spent into the same stanza because door keys, or the way to open a door, are symbolic to opening new and better doors in life. If you are to spend your hours badly, you won’t be able to open or even find the doors that lead you somewhere. However, these lines as they are placed, make you question the Speaker because it makes it seem like he views objects and his time used equally important. People usually view time much more valuable than objects because time you can really never get back when objects are replaceable – he loses his things but wastes his time.
    The poem is all about losing things, and in lines 10 Bishop starts to subtly turn the his lost objects into more emotionally significant ones. “I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or” It’s the idea that he didn’t just mention that he lost a watch, but it was his mother’s watch. If the Speaker really didn’t care, he wouldn’t have added in that sly detail. There’s a connection between the watch and his mother, being that perhaps he’s lost both the watch and his relationship with his mother. By using a time managing object, it can connect back to the time lost or misspent. He’s lost time with his mom so his association with her strayed too.
     The first few stanzas were about misplaced material goods, but once we hit line 11 (“next-to-last, of three loved houses went.”), the Speaker mentions that he loved the last three houses he lost. This starts to show that what he’s actually able to lose, less important objects, turns from that into more important, conceptually valued things. You can physically lose door keys and watches but you can’t with a home.
     “I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster, - some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent,” the poem makes a leap from houses to cities, loved ones, realms, rivers, and continents. How could the Speaker have owned these things? It could be that he was able to own them because of memories or relationships he had with the places and people.
     One Art’s theme is that there’s really an art to losing; that we should be prepared to lose important things because we’re so used to “Losing something everyday”. However, this is never the case for anyone – no one is ever prepared to lose things that hold important value to them; it’ll always seem like a “disaster”.
     The structure of the poem is a villanelle. The poem uses two words "master" or "intent" that rhyme throughout, and it also has two refrains "the art of losing isn’t hard to master," and "the art of losing’s not too hard to master." Bishop cheats in using refrains because there should be a second one that’s repeated throughout the poem, but instead of using a full line, she just uses the word ‘disaster’. The importance of these things is the connection they have. The fact that ‘intent’ was the starting rhyming word connects to the idea that the intention was to ‘master’ the ‘art of losing’ even though the Speaker really couldn’t. He continued to try to back up reasons to how losing things weren’t disasters, when in the end, all he was left with was all the reasons that they were.
     The Speaker seems like he has a wall up – he doesn’t want to hurt because of the things he’s lost. He copes with his losses by writing them down, but still has a hard time talking about the importance of what the things he lost were – he still kind of hides it. “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.” His joking voice I find to be, not necessarily funny, but an awkward voice – one that’s trying to release what he has to say but still isn’t completely sure how to. He has to continue to reassure himself that THE ART OF LOSING ISN’T HARD TO MASTER, that he should be okay with it. The final line is contradicting to the poem because it allows us to fully realize that what he loses has an affect on him. He has a difficulty admitting that everything he’s lost afflicts pain and discomfort to him, which means that he’s still holding and hiding his grief. He’s knows that losing things isn’t something you can master.