One Art Villanelle

The central tension of fleeting versus eternal is vital to One Art, as it assists in using the villanelle’s structure and visual imagery of the poem. This is to illustrate that like this poem, most poetry contains many meanings that can be interpreted in many different ways.

The structure of the poem plays a large part in the repetition of the tension. The poem’s structure, a villanelle, is very strict in its format. A villanelle follows a specific rhyme scheme and strict repetition. This repetition narrows down the tension “fleeting versus the eternal” by stating that the fleeting part of the tension is “[t]he art of losing” (Bishop 556), insisting that loss happens a lot, as it is now considered an art. The “eternal” part of the tension is

Bishop combines these two aspects of the villanelle to exhibit that One Art has a double meaning. On the surface, the last two lines of the final stanza

This imagery is incredibly personal, as it discusses the loss of a person. This quote suggests that it is the loss of a loved one because of the added phrase “the joking voice, a gesture I love” (Bishop 556). This quote shows that the person that was lost was important and familiar to the narrator, while simultaneously a loss that was easy to accept. The imagery used in within this poem purposefully starts off with impersonal items and the simplicity of grieving for them, as it adds to the meanings of the final example of imagery displayed in the poem. Bishop writes that the grieving and acceptance come quickly, regardless of the fact the lost entity is a house key or a loved one. This tension effectively portrays the theme, as well as leave room for a second interpretation. The last line of the poem, Bishop says that writing poetry about loss is just as easy as “the art of losing” (556). The final stanza brings forth two meanings of One Art, suggesting most poetry has multiple