villanelles

“One Art” by Elizabeth Bishop best displays the art of the villanelle. A Villanelle follows a five tercet and final quatrain line grouping. A villanelle also has a specific pattern of line repetitions and an aba rhyme scheme. “One Art” clearly contains all of these requirements:

·       The stanza requirements are clearly met in this poem with the 3,3,3,3,3,4 line order.

·       The first stanza’s first line “The art of losing isn’t hard to master,” and word “disaster” are repeated through throughout the poem. “The art of… master” is in the second and fourth stanza. “Disaster” is repeated in the third and fifth stanza. Then, both are repeated in the last stanza in the same order they appeared in the first.

·       The last word of the first and last line of the first five stanzas (except for the fourth) rhyme with master. The second line of each of the stanza’s rhymes with intent. Therefore, this poem follows a aba pattern.

This poems is about someone who is losing their memory. This person could have dementia. The narrator first is losing small objects that don’t matter like keys. As the poem progress the narrator loses bigger objects like places, names, cities, and where one is heading. The coordination of progressing the severity of what is being lost with the progression of the poem helps. The narrator is distraught about losing all of these items and the repetition of “the art of losing isn’t hard to master” and “disaster” best exemplifies this distraught. Also, people who are losing their memory tend to distress over the point that they are losing their memory (at least my grandmother does) and will consistently repeat that they are losing their memory. Therefore, the repetition throughout this poem could be help emphasize that the narrator is losing her memory of where objects are or what she was doing.