Villanelle Meaning

The significance of Villanelle form to One Art

One Art" is Elizabeth Bishop's poem of a villanelle, a form she admired and tried to work with for years as we know that she works so hard to achieve in many drafts. It is widely considered a splendid achievement of the villanelle and the subject of this poem is loss. “One art” in this poem is the art of losing showing us about why she compares loss to an art by using the appropriate form of villanelle that can help the readers understand more about the difficulty theme of this poem. Villanelle is an old form with its distinctive pattern of rhyme and repetition containing nineteen lines and two different lines which are systematically repeated in the poem. It is possible that she choose
the Villanelle form that compels the rhyme and repetition to tell us that she also compels herself to master loss at that time. The act of her writing is an act of survival because it is very hard to compose a villanelle the same as it is very hard to master loss. Villanelle form of this poem comprises 5 tercets and 1 quatrain and I also found the significance that she choose this form to write this poem in 5 reasons of repetition and 1 reason of rhyme. The first use of repetitive form in this poem is about the meaning of loss and art that are also about repetition.
Loss involves in repetition because the writer says that loss can happen any time and it can happen repeatedly in everyone’s life as everyday loss. Another meaning is in order to master loss; we have to practice repeatedly to make it easier to be able to accept it. Moreover, the meaning of art in this poem is also about repetition. At first, art for me is something that was produced by the artists such as paintings, poem or something that we can see and touch it. Elizabeth changes my thought that the real art is something that needs practice. The artist who wants to get an art is required to practice doing it repeatedly because it needs practice. Both Loss and art is something that requires practice, so she compares loss to an art. Therefore, the way that poet uses this repetitive form is very appropriate with the meaning of both loss and
art. Bishop’s repetitive idea and emotion is another reason that makes her use villanelle to present their repetition.
The idea starts since the title of this poem which is contain much meaning. Being titled One Art ultimately implies that dealing with loss is a type of art in itself. An art requires extreme effort on the artist's part. She said that if you practice to accept loss it can help you to not being sad very much when this kind of situation occurs with you any time. Even though she knows that you can not accept it one hundred percent, it is better than you did not do anything. In the same way, if you want to invent or create an art, you should practice a lot to achieve it, but it does not mean that practice a lot will surely get art, and again it is better than doing nothing because you will get nothing as well. We have to try our best first even if the result will not satisfy; we know that we do the best so that we can be proud of ourselves than doing nothing. It is obvious to see that she state this idea many times in this poem that is because she is controlling her own emotion to think that she should master loss as she write it in the poem. She try to tell herself that it is not hard to master until the last that she know it is hard to tell herself that it is not hard. This repetitive idea and emotion makes her choose villanelle to express
it. The various things that she lost in the poem also tell that she lost many things and the losing can happen with anyone repeatedly. I also notice that the things that she loses from the beginning to the ending of the poem it is more valuable for her. She begins with losing door keys, the hour badly spent then places, names, houses, realms, rivers, continent to her lover. At first, she said that it is a simple thing that the loss can happen with us so we should practice to accept it. Until the last stanza that she loses her lover it shows that it is harder for her to say that it is easy to accept this loss. She try her best to control herself to say that it is not hard to master but she can not, so she just add the word too in the line to say that it is not too hard to master and it may look like disaster. She forces herself to write it. As so often in Bishop’s work the parenthesis (if you have ears to hear) is the place to hear the real truth (Heaney, Seamus 1995: 184). She has many lists of her loss things that were told in this poem, so if she did not use villanelle form, it is hard to confirm the sense of her loss for every time that she states her things. Apart from things that she lost it repeatedly, she also lost many people who she loves many times in her life. Elizabeth Bishop states many losses of people in this poem to show that even her love person in her life can be missing from her life. First person that she lost was stated in line 7 “Then practice losing farther, losing faster”. It means that the more we practice to accept the sad feeling when we are losing something, the faster we can accept it next time. However, this line can be interpreted to another different meaning. The word farther is a homophone to the word father which can mean she lost her father. From her biography, it is the fact that her father died when she was eight months old (Baym, Nina 1999: 2610). It means that she lost her father very fast in her life and this sad memory still stuck in her mind. Line 10 tells us about the next person that her loss which is said” I lost my mother’s watch”. It contains more meaning than she lost the watch. It means that she lost her own mother because when she was five, her mother was taken to a sanitarium and Bishop never saw her again (Baym, Nina1999: 2610). So she would feel very painful that she lost her parents since she was young. The last important person that she lost was shown in the last stanza which is talking about “you”. It means her lover, someone who might have inspired her to write this poem. The loss of her parents would look like the most terrible situation for her but to think in another way, the loss of her lover can make her sadder because she loss her parents since she was very young but for her lover she is very close to each other for a long time but now she does not have this person with her to do anything together anymore. So this repetitive loss of people who she loves in her life is one of significance that she uses villanelle. The last reason of repetition that makes her use villanelle form is the repetition of gender in same-sex love. It is just an assumption of a critic said that “The repetition reflects the repetition of gender in same-sex love and allows for the discuss of lesbian love” (Nickowitz, Peter 2006: 134) The last loss that she says in last stanza is the losing of her lover which is a woman that she loves so it is the repetition for the same sex. Bishop’s admiration for Moore as we know that Bishop later wrote an essay outlining her friendship with Moore, which began on that afternoon in 1934 and continued until Moore’s death in 1972, at the age of 84. That article, “Efforts of Affection: A Memoir of Marianne Moore,” (Byrne, Edward 2009) This shows us how much Bishop loves Moore, so it is possible that she choose to use villanelle to tell that the repetition of her love in the same gender is related to the repetition of villanelle form. Apart from repetitive form in villanelle, there is a reason of rhyme in this poem that makes her choose villanelle form. There is an important pair of rhyme in this poem which is the word master and disaster. The significance of using villanelle is she can use these two rhyme to show the race between them. The race continues between "disaster" and "master" where she wants to tell that if you can not master loss, disaster might come to you. You will be very sad as it is a disaster in your life if you can not accept the sad feeling from loss. She is also telling herself to choose between these two words. Everything that she lost in her life makes she feel very sorrowful so she is trying to master it by writing this poem to calm herself and try to master it. Villanelle is the most appropriate form to this poem because the pattern of rhyme and repetition is suitable for every aspect that Bishop wants to tell us. Not only she writes it to remind herself about her loss, but also the repetition is a way that she might really want to remind the readers to aware that loss can happen with anyone and this can happen repeatedly in your life.