Elizabeth Bishop’s poem “One Art” begins with a bold claim that “the art of losing isn’t hard to master.” The speaker suggests that certain everyday items intentionally get lost, like house keys or a little bit of wasted time here and there. The losses mentioned in the poem get more and more significant as the poem progresses. First, it’s minor things like names and places. Then, more specific items, such as a mother’s watch or a home the speaker has loved in the past. The idea appears to be that if you’re comfortable with smaller, insignificant losses, when larger, more important ones come along, you’ll be prepared to cope. As the poetry flows on, we wonder whether the speaker is teaching the audience about this “art of losing” because she has mastered it, or is she trying to convince herself that it’s okay, that after her grieving process she will be okay? This goes unanswered. In the last stanza, however, something deeper is revealed. We learn that the loss that really bothers her is that of a person she loved. We aren’t told who. Bishop uses a very complicated verse form, the villanelle. It is known for its convoluted structure, and the resulting difficulties it can present to writers. This form type consists of nineteen lines of any length that are divided into six stanzas. The beauty of this particular work is the way Bishop doesn’t allow the restrictions of villanelle to interrupt her effortless, conversational flow. It reads as a natural progression, as opposed to something that was worked at to achieve. The poem opens with a clear statement: “The art of losing isn’t hard to master.” This is a bold declaration that loss isn’t a big deal, it’s “no disaster”, get used to it. Stanza two continues with what reads to me as instructions from the speaker, to practice losing things each day. We’re told to “accept the fluster” of losing