One Art Lyrics
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.
About
In “One Art,” one of the signature poems from her final collection (“Geography III,” 1977), Elizabeth Bishop proves herself an expert handler of the villanelle form, a powerfully understated elegist and a master of disaster, which, in this poem, is the death of her partner.
The villanelle structure is regular and repetitive, with the end of every last line of each stanza ending with either “master” or “disaster”, giving us the impression that Bishop is trying extremely hard to hammer her point down. When one tries to remember something or get an idea into one’s head, a common technique is to repeat it over and over, and this is the technique Bishop employs to convince herself that she can get over the death of her partner.
For more on villanelles see below.
See also Dylan Thomas, ‘Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night
Language and Imagery
The voice is that of the first person speaker, the poet, using the pronoun ‘I’. The tone is sardonic and ironic. The idea that loss will not ‘'bring disaster’ is true, and yet it is clear that the poet is trying to convince herself and the reader that she can cope with a loved one’s death. So she lists trivial things she has mislaid – keys and forgotten names — to the huge loss of bereavement. The dark humour creates a sense of her grief and vulnerability and is deeply moving.
About Villanelles
A villanelle is a poetic form with nineteen lines, a strict pattern of repetition and a regular rhyme scheme. It comprises five three-lined stanzas or tercets, and ends with a quatrain, or four-lined stanza.
The first and third lines of the opening stanza are repeated in an alternating pattern as the final line of each next stanza. The two repeated lines then form the final two lines of the entire poem.
The rhyme scheme requires the repeating lines to rhyme, and for the second line of every tercet to rhyme. The rhyme scheme forms the pattern ABA, ABA etc till the end, where the last stanza is ABAA.
The metrical rhythm is broadly iambic pentameter, that is five metrical feet or iambs per line, where a iamb is made up of one unstressed followed by one stressed syllable. This isn’t always strictly followed, but usually the effrect is solemn and measured, as suitable for the subject of this poem.
The overall effect is satisfying for its mathematical completeness. It lends itself to emphatic, strong themes.
Q&A
Find answers to frequently asked questions about the song and explore its deeper meaning
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