One Art

My favorite poem so far has been "One Art" by Elizabeth Bishop. I think what's most attractive about the poem is the contrast between the casual tone and the unique form. It's almost deceptive because while it seems as though Bishop is simply talking to the reader, using conversational lines such as, "I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or, next to last of three beloved houses went," she is actually following a complex villanelle form. I also think that the pace is superb. The opening line, "The art of losing isn't hard to master," is an interesting statement to begin with. She's pretty much saying that we lose things all the time, and if we get used to it, it will be easy to cope with more serious losses in the future. The repeated third line of the first stanza, "but it wasn't a disaster," is Bishop's way of trying to take a step away from the pain she feels.

However, the nonchalant attitude displayed in the first stanza seems to dissolve throughout the poem. Each stanza, the losses she faces grow more and more serious. She moves from losing car keys, something minor, to her mother's watch, and finally to a person in her life who she clearly has not gotten over yet. As a result of the gradual increase in the intensity of losses, Bishop forces us to look at our own lives and the losses we have experienced.

Bishop's ability to maintain such a complicated form, while keeping a conversational tone throughout creates a really unique work.