Chaos Vs. Form in Elizabeth Bishop's "One Art"

A villanelle, a very strict and complicated poetic form, uses rhyme and repetition and relies heavily on the contrast and chemistry between the two literary devices. In "One Art," Elizabeth Bishop slightly alters the villanelle form to capture the unpredictable nature of a disastrous event. Her use of poetic form and subject matter are harmonious since the unpredictability of the form reflects the subject matter. The villanelle is so obsessive about form that even the slightest deviation from the predetermined rhyme and repetition calls attention to the idea that disaster cannot be controlled. In altering the form, she shows the reader that no matter how certain one is in the stability of any given situation, there is always the chance that disaster is on the horizon. In "One Art," Bishop breaks the standard repetition of a villanelle to show that mastering one's emotions during a disaster, represented by her imparting emotion in this personal poem, can be as impossible as controlling disaster.

The alternating rhyme of "master" and "disaster" always ends with the word "disaster" thus reinforcing the idea of disaster and chaos overcoming the concept of mastering loss and one's emotions. To master something would be to have complete control over said thing. By beginning the poem with "The art of losing isn't hard to master," the speaker gives the reader the impression that she is in control. It's a powerful way to begin a poem about loss, and by building on the concept of smaller losses, first things that "are filled with the intent to be lost" to things that are lost everyday to huge geographical losses, shows the reader that the build-up is painful and slow for the speaker. The speaker, also, closes her more painful losses with "the art of losing isn't hard to master." In the fourth stanza, the speaker loses "loved houses" and her mother's watch, both which represent stability at home and memories. To mask her feelings of loss, the stanza ends with the repetitive phrase, thus showing that the repetition offers a sense of reassurance to the speaker. However, the repetition of the phrase seems to be overshadowed by the use of the word "disaster." The speaker seems to be at war with her emotions, unsure if she should allow emotion out or hold it in. However, the disorganization of the lines pertaining to disaster and the idea that the poem ends on that note, suggest that no matter how much the speaker tries to stay composed, losing overcomes her and her emotions, which can be then translated into her poetry.

The placement of the phrase "Write it!" before "like disaster" in the last line of the poem personalizes the close connection between the difficulty of mastering art and losing, sometimes precious, belongings or people. This connection, thus, helps the reader grasp the idea that while repetition may make an impression, the underlying lack of order eventually shows a great deal of repressed emotion. In the last stanza, Bishop utilizes parenthesis to personalize her loss and thus opens the reader up to the painful reality of disaster. She says, "-Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture / I love)." In this line, the speaker is losing a person, not an idea, not something small and not something natural. The lost person is described explicitely with a "joking voice and a gesture," thus humanizing the loss by giving the reader a number of personal details.

However, in past stanzas, the speaker says "none of these will bring disaster," when referring to smaller losses. The sudden switch of a sarcastic tone in those lines to a serious tone in the last stanza is emphasized by the word "shan't." The word, the contraction between shall and not, is very formal. It removes the speaker from emotion, one final time, before she fully embraces the connection between trying to maintain poetic form and trying to contain disaster. For the poet, both seem impossible and synonymous. With the repetition of the word "like" in the last line, the poet's voice breaks, almost as if she is stuttering. Stuttering, which is often associated with crying and an abundance of emotion, clearly shows that the speaker is overcome with emotion. The two instances of the word "like" are separated by the phrase "Write it!" Not only is the phrase an imperative command and thus signifies action, but also it reinforces the idea of poetry as art. "The art of losing," doesn't only refer to the concept of losing people, places and things, but also the art of losing the traditional form of the poem becomes an art form in itself. In breaking the poetic form, the author finds order in the chaos and she must "Write it!"

The obsessive repetition of "The art of losing isn't hard to master" and the lack of fixity in the lines pertaining to disaster establish a positive and negative connection between the concept of a very rigorous poetic form and the uncontrollability of disaster. Since Bishop closely follows the villanelle form when she uses "The art of losing isn't hard to master," there is a certain degree of weight placed on that phrase. The phrase becomes something ingrained in the reader, something that he can expect when moving from stanza to stanza. However, the phrase also becomes an evident façade to mask the speaker's emotions, when the reader sees a change from the last line of the first stanza to the last line of the third stanza and then the last line of the fifth stanza. Bishop describes the desire of some things to be lost, by saying, "to be lost that their loss is no disaster," however she then goes on to explain the loss of bigger concepts, such as cities, by saying, "I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster." These two lines describe a different type of loss. The first line sets up the concept that "so many things seem filled with the intent to be lost," thus suggesting a certain degree of emotional removal for the speaker from the situation. She "lose(s) something every day," such as, "door keys" and "an hour badly spend." But to her, these things are small, tiny examples of bigger things that can be lost "farther", lost "Faster." With the speaker, the prospect of losing "two cities, lovely ones," as well as a number of other normally unpossessable things, such as the ownership of rivers and continents, creates a sense of longing in her. She says that she "misses them, but it's no disaster." However, her sense of removal from past losses suggests that the speaker does in fact believe that their loss is a disaster.

The chaotic structure of the last lines of the first, third, fifth and sixth stanzas, suggest that while there is the repetition of the phrase "the art of losing isn't hard to master," that chaos, that disaster has the potential to destroy the idea of control, and in this case mastering a concept, all together. The reader notes that there seems to be a connection between form and chaos. While Bishop presents the idea of controlling one's emotion in mastering the art of losing, she contradicts that idea, by not only showing a switch from complete removal of emotion to a slight longing for the things she has lost, but also shows it through breaking the form and following it precisely in alternating lines. Almost ironically, Bishop's normally perfectly formal villanelle becomes a disaster, mirroring the speaker's unpredictable emotions within the poem and her lack of control over the emotions.

Loss is handled differently depending on the person. The speaker in Elizabeth Bishop's "One Art," first goes through a stage of denial, but as the poem progresses, she begins to recognize the pain of loss and disaster. Word choice sometimes gives the illusion that the speaker is control over her emotions, but slight breaks in repetition and form help shatter that illusion. Every person has a breaking point, and through an explicit and precise use of language, the reader sees that the speaker's feelings begin to crack through her tough exterior as the stanzas progress. In this case, the loss of a person causes the speaker's breakdown and the ultimate union between disaster and poetic form.