Summary Of Elizabeth Bishop's Villanelle

Loss and the pain of loss are explored in Elizabeth Bishop’s villanelle, “One art,” as the persona attempts to control the grief that manages to resurface after every repeat of the refrain. The unstressed ends of these refrains negate the motive of the persona and shows “...a poignant recognition of the pathos of human [attempting] to control the uncontrollable” (Cowell, 1997). The iambic nature of the poem connotes to a persona posing to be detached from the objects they have lost. The melody is made by this rhythm to be optimistic (due to the down and up of the melody) despite the losses; experiencing loss-“[then] practice losing farther, losing faster”-is encouraged by the persona at the beginning. However, it is in the tone of the first stanza that establishes the true grief the person attempts to repress; the dichotomy of what is written and how it is said (Holmes, 2007). While a
Weak endings (also known as feminine endings) give a tone of uncertainty, doubt, as from the strength of the second to the last syllable, the persona drop their tone meek, as they themselves are uncertain of their own words. This pushes the persona to repeat what they have wrote, the refrains of the villanelles, as if not to convince the audience, but to convince themselves that truly, no disaster will come from their losses. The uncertainty regarding their own “mastery” on the art of losing is further magnified by the repetition of the refrains, a key factor in villanelles. Each repetition poses as a threat to the credibility of the persona as the meaning of the refrain changes in each repetition, due to the lack of a strong ending, failing to give