Elizabeth Bishop published what’s perhaps her most famous poem in her final collection of verse, Geography III, which appeared in 1976. She wrote “One Art” using a highly structured form known as a villanelle, which is a nineteen-line poem in six stanzas that involves a strict rhyme scheme. Perhaps the most unique feature of the villanelle form is its use of two refrains that repeat at designated points throughout the poem. In Bishop’s villanelle, both refrains insist on the possibility that the emotional toll of loss can be managed gracefully. The speaker of “One Art” repeats these refrains to emphasize their capacity to master “the art of losing.” And indeed, they spend much of the poem enumerating various losses they’ve experienced throughout their life. However, the speaker concludes the poem by addressing an anonymous “you” whom they clearly cherish and yet soon will lose, possibly to death. Only then does the reader realize how the speaker’s repeated insistence that “loss is no disaster” (line 3) is merely a strategy for avoiding a profound sense of grief. No matter how much the speaker accepts the inevitability of loss, they rail against the inescapability of grief.

Take a Study Break