Elizabeth Bishop's Villanelle One Art Analysis

In Elizabeth Bishop’s villanelle “One Art” she expresses a depressing tone of the woman’s losses mixed in with imagery and nonchalant diction to fully represent the situation she is in. The poem starts out with making the act of losing something an art, and trying to prove it “isn’t hard to master”(1). The diction of making losing something a skill creates the sense to the audience that it is beneficial to be able to loss things with ease and no worry. The “Then practice losing farther, losing faster” (7) creates the image of how more valuable items are getting lost, but since the woman has “mastered” the feeling of losing, she feels as if it is okay. This sense of extreme conotes the illogical thinking behind the entire situation as a whole. As she loses more sentimental items, “I lost my mother’s watch” (10), it helps create the feeling

Additionally, the repetition of the word “master” (1-3) creates a feeling of the woman having to constantly remind herself of what she believes. Allowing the audience to infer that in reality the woman is not too sure of her thoughts. The author further tries to backs up the claim of the woman believing herself when she states “I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster” (15). When the woman made the statement it creates a very clear image of a person who has lost many things in life but tries to forget and pass on like nothing has really happened, hoping that this way in her mind the terrible event has actually never occurred. As the poem draws to an end the woman reveals the truth with “ I shan’t have lied. It’s evident the art of losing’s not too hard to master…” (17-18). Once the truth was given at the end, it shows the woman’s real pain in life and creates the vivid image of her sufferings with loss. Although she tries to pass off as nothing bad has happened, deep down she was always suffering from every single