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
line with an iambic nature suggests a line of conviction due to its stressed ending, the first stanza ends with an extra unstressed syllable, a weak ending.
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
it a firm stand when the weight of these losses increases. At the mention of a lost loved one did the persona break away from the intention of their refrain. The break of their final defense: a defeat, is shown-or rather, heard when the persona is pushed by themselves to accept what they had tried to deny: “though it may look like...like disaster,” ending with a final weak ending. Their hidden grief is hinted by the careful placement of unstressed syllables at each refrain. The doubt in their tone caused by these weak endings fails to give these refrains the conviction the persona tries to set. In the persona’s final exhortation to “[write] it” is when this grief is formally acknowledged, and the persona faces defeat in acknowledging the disaster that comes with losing.