One ArtElizabeth Bishop(Poem 146 in your booklet)

Elizabeth Bishop

SIFT• S = losing things – from small, material, insignificant things such as

watches/keys, to losing someone you love – mastering the art of losing things. Avoiding the ‘disaster’.

• I = Not be flustered about losing material items, trying to cover up /deny her true feelings of loss/disaster of losing a loved one – attempts to compare losing a loved one to losing items, belies the truth that it is difficult and disastrous to lose someone. No matter how much you try to prepare, you can’t be prepared for losing someone significant – effect on readers is to make us consider the importance of loved ones? Re-consider attachments to material items and things of true significance. The poet herself is trying to come to terms with a loss – the progression of things being lost culminates in losing a loved one – and has, in some small way, prepared her for this moment. Items or things of value – keys, watches, houses, rivers, places, people.

• F = Villanelle – 6 even stanzas, extra line in the 6th, line 1 is repeated in stanza 2, 4 and 6.

• T = Rhyme and repetition – “master/disaster/fluster/faster/vaster/gesture”, “the art of losing..”, “I lost..” – Alliteration in stanza 3, line 1. Personification in stanza 1, line 2 and 3 “filled with the intent”. Enjambment – stanza 6, lines 1&2. Brackets or parentheses, “(the joking voice..). Imperative –”Write it!”. Listing in stanza 3 “places, and names..” and stanza 5

Key Words• Villanelle• Tercet• Quatrain• Rhyme• Refrain (repetition of lines)

Background of author

• Elizabeth Bishop (8 February 1911 – 6 October 1979) was an American poet. Elizabeth Bishop was born in Worcester, Massachusetts. After her father, a successful builder, died when she was eight months old, Bishop’s mother became mentally ill and was institutionalized in 1916. (Bishop wrote about the time of her mother's struggles in her short story "In The Village.") Effectively orphaned during her very early childhood, she lived with her grandparents on a farm in Nova Scotia, a period she also referenced in her writing. Bishop's mother remained in an asylum until her death in 1934, and the two were never reunited.

• Later in childhood, Bishop's paternal family gained custody, and she was removed from the care of her grandparents and moved in with her father's much wealthier family in Worcester, Massachusetts. However, Bishop was very unhappy in Worcester, and her separation from her grandparents made her very lonely. While she was living in Worcester, she developed chronic asthma, from which she suffered for the rest of her life. Her time in Worcester is briefly chronicled in her poem "In The Waiting Room."

• Bishop was greatly influenced by the poet Marianne Moore to whom she was introduced by a librarian at Vassar in 1934. Moore took a keen interest in Bishop’s work, and at one point Moore dissuaded Bishop from attending Cornell Medical School, in which the poet had briefly enrolled herself after moving to New York City following her Vassar graduation. It was four years before Bishop addressed ‘Dear Miss Moore’ as ‘Dear Marianne,’ and only then at the elder poet’s invitation. The friendship between the two women, memorialized by an extensive correspondence (see One Art), endured until Moore's death in 1972. Bishop's "At the Fishhouses" (1955) contains allusions on several levels to Moore's 1924 poem "A Grave." [6]

Background of author

• She was introduced to Robert Lowell by Randall Jarrell in 1947 and they became great friends, mostly through their written correspondence, until Lowell's death in 1977. After his death, she wrote, "our friendship, [which was] often kept alive through years of separation only by letters, remained constant and affectionate, and I shall always be deeply grateful for it". They also both influenced each other's poetry. Lowell cited Bishop's influence on his poem "Skunk Hour" which he said, "[was] modeled on Miss Bishop's 'The Armadillo.'" Also, his poem "The Scream" is "derived from...Bishop's story In the Village." "North Haven," one of the last poems she published during her lifetime, was written in memory of Lowell in 1978. Another famous writer with whom she corresponded frequently was Flannery O'Connor.

• Although Elizabeth Bishop was involved in romantic relationships with women, she did not write about her personal life or her sexual orientation in her poetry and did not see herself as a "lesbian poet" or as a "female poet." She only wanted to be judged based on the quality of her writing and not on her gender or sexual orientation

Proclaiming ironically how easy it is to master the art of losing, Bishop's speaker asserts that it just takes practice and then catalogues all the things she has lost.

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

One Art

The art of losing isn’t hard to master,so many things seem filled with the intentto be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the flusterof 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 meantto travel. None of these things will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! My last, ornext-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.

-Event losing you (the joking voice, a gestureI love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident the art of losing’s not too hard to masterthough it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

Analyse these features1. Use of villanelle form2. Caesura and enjambment3. Parentheses4. Hyphen in the final stanza5. Exclamation mark6. The meter – iambic pentameter7. Length of lines8. The half or irregular rhymes9. The voice of the persona10. The tone of the poem11. The relationship of each stanza – the structure and

development of ideas – beginning with things seeming to have an ‘intent’ to get lost, lost keys, places, “my mother’s watch”, houses then cities and “continents” and finally “you”.

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.

Here is another, much lighter villanelle by a more contemporary poet, Sondra Ball. Her subject is the villanelle itself, and the form is strictly adhered to, though she does allow herself some irregular rhymes:

Musical and sweet, the villanelle,like light reflected in a gentle rhyme,moves to the ringing of a silver bell,

its form creating soft and tender spells.Like the singing of distant silver chimes,musical and sweet, the villanelle

flows through the heart, and builds a magic spellfrom sunlight and from shadows, and, sublime,moves to the ringing of a silver bell.

It never arcs into the sharp loud yellof vast pipe organs. Soft its climb.Musical and sweet, the villanelle,

like a tiny and translucent shellcatching sunlight in the summer time,moves to the ringing of a silver bell.

Soft and gentle, tender and so frail,like light pouring through petals of the lime,musical and sweet, the villanellemoves to the ringing of a silver bell.

This hardy and flexible poetic form has had a resurgence in the last hundred years. Probably the best of the poems produced during this time is Dylan Thomas's reflection on the death of his father, Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night. And for good measure it's probably one of the best poems of the twentieth century of any kind, period:

Do not go gentle into that good night,Old age should burn and rave at close of day;Rage, rage, against the dying of the light.

Though Wise men at their end know dark is right,Because their words had forked no lightning theyDo not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how brightTheir frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sightBlind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.Do not go gentle into that good night.Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

• Contemporary poets have not limited themselves to the pastoral themes originally expressed by the free-form villanelles of the Renaissance, and have loosened the fixed form to allow variations on the refrains. Elizabeth Bishop’s "One Art" is another well-known example; other poets who have penned villanelles include W. H. Auden, Oscar Wilde, Seamus Heany, David Shapiro, and Sylvia Plath.

Essay• Bishop chooses a rigid form of poetry to present her grief at

losing a loved one.

• The tone of voice employed by Bishop betrays the deep sense of loss her persona feels.