Of Loss and Hope
The power and poignancy of Bishop's "One Art"
Dear friends,
Elizabeth Bishop’s poem “One Art” has long been a favorite of mine. What appears to be a simple reflection on loss accrues profundity as it returns to and repeats its meditations on regret and longing. Recently I was reminded of a post I wrote on the poem for the Society for Women of Letters. I share it here with the Society’s permission. I hope you find in these words some unexpected encouragement.
I rarely speak of the losses I incurred when I left my former institution. Perhaps I find them too tender.
I lost friends and colleagues, students and classes, opportunities and standing, security and comfortability, family and favorite restaurants, mountains and foliage. I’ve gained much in return to be sure, but there’s also been so much loss. At times it’s hard to square.
Speaking of these losses sometimes feels like betrayal to my new life. So I usually just stay silent. That adds a burden all its own.
Elizabeth Bishop’s poignant poem, “One Art,” suggests I’m not the only one who has struggled to navigate such jumbled emotions in the face of loss. In these lines, Bishop offers solidarity and encouragement in the struggle. It’s an important word, especially insofar as it better connects us with one another and instills us with hope to carry on.
Function Following Form
The first thing one might notice about the poem is its form.1 Bishop uses what’s called a villanelle, a tightly built poetic structure with rigid requirements to reuse lines that then provide thematic and atmospheric anchors for the message.2 Villanelles are 19-line poems, primarily consisting of five tercets (3-line stanzas) with a final quatrain to close.
The technical difficulty of villanelles makes them less common than, say, sonnets, but in a master poet’s hands (such as Bishop’s) the form speaks powerfully. The opening stanza of a villanelle establishes the topic with the first and third line recurring throughout. These foundational lines dance around one another over the course of the poem, infiltrating and captivating the reader’s imagination.
Bishop’s poem is built from two key lines (variations of which occur throughout): “The art of losing isn’t hard to master” and “Their loss is no disaster.” Inherent in these lines, and especially in their combination, is the tension animating the poem. Loss is an unavoidable staple of human life, but the grief that accompanies such loss is often devastating. How can we recognize and honor what’s lost while still moving forward? Both seem crucial to the task of being human, but they also seem irrevocably at odds. This paradox is brought to the fore by Bishop’s rhyme of master with disaster.
As Bishop considers the ubiquity of loss in the human condition, she begins with the mundane and tangible, what can (and hopefully will) be found: door keys. She continues with the intangible and more consequential, things that can’t be regained: the hour badly spent. As the poem goes on, Bishop expands her focus to places, names, and intentions. The losses now are no longer external, but internal to one’s memory and by extension perhaps affecting one’s sense of identity.
The next stanza takes an excursus through losses by cultures and civilizations (cities, rivers, even a continent) before the poem ends with the speaker’s most personal and most painful loss: the loss of an important relationship, one that had brought her much joy. Most likely it’s this loss that motivated the poetic reflection on loss and grief, and the speaker’s tone beautifully captures the balancing act we undertake to maintain composure and stability in the aftermath of loss.
Reckoning as Redemption
Bruce Fleming and Amy Garnett point to the speaker’s understatement as indication of her struggle.3 To call loss and grief an “art,” one we should practice in order to get better at, blurs the line between the loss thrust upon us and our response to it. The term captures the disorienting feeling of loss as well, as we grasp to recover what’s lost and in the grasping realize our own limitations. As the poem opens, the speaker anticipates loss becoming easier to take over time, but the experience proves the exact opposite. Jonathan Sircy explains:
In the poem’s opening line, Bishop implicitly trusted that, with each successive loss, she would become hardened to its consequences; the replication of the villanelle’s form, however, has the opposite result. Instead of inuring the poet to its effects, each reiteration of the word ‘disaster’ heightens loss’s impact and demonstrates that disaster has actually mastered her.4
In the last stanza, especially, this vulnerability makes itself felt, which Susan Rich suggests appears in a drastic shift: “The ‘joking voice, the gesture I love’ suddenly breaks into the present tense and the narrative of bravado falters.”5
But, true to form, the speaker doesn’t give up so easily: the parenthetical “Write it!” calls attention to the poem’s own witness of enduring, coping with, and even overcoming the inevitable suffering of this life. In this way, “One Art” is an altogether human poem. It recognizes and rails against our limitations, it offers creativity as a means to express and come to terms with our experiences, it links the individual with the universal.
Bishop is not speaking as a Christian, but her message nonetheless resonates with convictions of our faith. The losses we endure in this world are no small matter, and we should not treat them as such. They bespeak a lamentable aspect of the human realm as it currently stands, a flaw that sin introduced in God’s good design. Things are not as they are supposed to be, to echo Cornelius Plantinga’s classic book on sin.
Bishop’s creative response to such conditions is laudable, one that we can affirm. And, as we honestly acknowledge the possibilities and pitfalls of such human responses to loss, we can be all the more hopeful knowing our attempts—as helpful as they may be—pale in comparison with those of the One who promises to wipe away all our tears and to make all things new (Revelations 21). And that’s a hope that we know won’t disappoint.
Miscellany
The Society for Women of Letters is a wonderful outfit that seeks to build intellectual and spiritual community among Christian women. You can find out more about the society and their activities at their website: Society for Women of Letters. I also interviewed their founding president, Melissa Cain Travis, over at Christian Scholar’s Review blog: “Thinking Beyond the Ivory Tower.” Finally, readers of this newsletter might find of interest SWL’s own Substack—Shadowlands Dispatch.
Blessings all,
Marybeth
Elizabeth Bishop, “One Art.” The poem was originally collected in Bishop’s The Complete Poems 1926-1979 (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1979).
“Villanelle,” Poetry Foundation Glossary of Poetic Terms. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/learn/glossary-terms/villanelle.
Bruce Fleming and Ann Garnett, “Elizabeth Bishop.” Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised ed., (Hackensack, NJ: Salem Press, 2006), 1-7.
Jonathan Sircy, “Bishop’s One Art.” Explicator 63 (2005), 241-244.
Susan Rich, “Elizabeth Bishop and the Art of Losing,” English Studies in Africa 41 (1998), 51-59.