Poetry for All
Transcript for Episode 29: Elizabeth Bishop, "One Art"

Abram:Ê

Hello, IÕm Abram Van Engen.

Joanne:Ê

And IÕm Joanne Diaz.

Abram:Ê

And this is Poetry for All.

Joanne:

In this podcast we read a poem, discuss it, learn from it, and then read it one more time.Ê

Abram:

Today we will read and discuss ÒOne ArtÓ by Elizabeth Bishop. Joanne, would you like to read this poem?

Joanne:Ê

With pleasure, yes!Ê

Click here for the poem ÒOne ArtÓ: [https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47536/one-art]Ê

Abram:

Oh, she kills me, sheÕs so good!

Joanne:

I know, [laughing] The End!

Abram:

Alright, so hereÕs the thing. A lot of people listening to this probably know who Elizabeth Bishop was, but if youÕre among those who are just experiencing her for the first time, my advice to you is simple: go read Elizabeth Bishop, get all of her poems, there arenÕt even that many, and spend the weekend, this weekend, reading Elizabeth Bishop. She is by far one of the greatest poets of all time.Ê

Joanne:

You know whatÕs interesting, you just commented on how she didnÕt have that many poems. Like her _Complete Poems_ includes maybe a hundred poems, right?

Abram:

Mmhmm.

Joanne:

She had this incredible pressure that she put on herself in her life where she wrote. She was constantly trying to write, and she struggled with it constantly. She was so frustrated all the time because she was challenging herself to truly create something new every time she wrote a poem. And boy, we are the beneficiaries of that labor, because it worked. Every poem just really pops off the page. SheÕs just magnificent.

Abram:

Yeah, itÕs not about quantity, itÕs about quality and she certainly had quality. And that quality was recognized. So just to give a little background here: she was born in 1911 in Worcester, MA, she died in 1979 and sheÕs widely recognized as one of the greatest poets of the 20th century. She won every possible award you could win: the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, Guggenheim Fellowships and so forth. She was the poetry consultant to the Library of Congress, she was the first woman professor ever to be included in the catalog at Harvard UniversityÉ

Joanne:

Woohoo!! [Laughs]

Abram:

[Laughing] É yeah, so just say a word about why her poetry is so unique, so special, and so widely recognized.

Joanne:

She was known as a poet of precision and discipline. Certainly she wrote in free verse, but she was also a master of forms. She was a very, very private person during her lifetime; very shy, very reserved. But over the past couple of decades, we have come to know a lot about her, especially through her correspondence with a variety of people including Robert Lowell, who was one of her closest friends and the majority of their friendship was created through their letter-writing to each other. We know a lot about her through her correspondence with Marianne Moore, who was a full generation older than Elizabeth Bishop but was a wonderful friend to her and mentor. And also, weÕve learned a lot in recent years from her letters to Lota de Macedo Soares who was her partner of many years. During her lifetime she did not identify as a lesbian; however she was romantically involved with several women during her lifetime and had a very long-term relationship with Lota de Macedo Soares. And she lived with Soares in Brazil, for years she lived as an expatriate. Elizabeth Bishop is known as a poet of great constraint and great reserve on the page, but she had an incredible, turbulent, difficult life. When she was born within a year her father had died, shortly after that her mother was committed to an asylum and had a variety of mental health issues. And Elizabeth Bishop throughout her young life had to shuttle from one relativeÕs house to another and it was a very unstable, unreliable kind of existence that she lived, and in her correspondence she really gives the impression that she felt like an orphan her whole life, even into middle age and adulthood. She felt a profound loneliness that permeates a lot of her work.Ê

ThereÕs another layer here: just to go back to Soares and BishopÕs relationship with her for a moment, if you think about mid-twentieth century America and what kind of cultural milieu Bishop was working in and living in, some of that poetic restraint that she exhibits in her work, it might have been a form of self-preservation. So during the time that she was a consultant for the Library of Congress--we now call that the Poet Laureate position--well, it was a government position, right, and it still is. And at the time that she held that position, according to Megan MarshallÕs biography of Elizabeth Bishop, there were 6,000 workers who were fired in a Òcrusade for morality and decencyÓ that were perceived to be gay or lesbian. Following up on that, in the 1950s the American Psychiatric AssociationÕs first DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) characterized homosexuality as Òa sociopathic personality disturbance.Ó So that gives you a sense of how careful Elizabeth Bishop and her contemporaries had to be in that particular moment and why an expatriate life in Brazil might have been appealing to her.Ê

Abram:

ThatÕs very helpful background and it also helps us see a little bit behind the surface of things because on the surface it seems like she lived this kind of life of privilege: she had a trust fund, she was educated at Vassar [College], she lived abroad in Brazil with her partner, she had all the accolades of the poetry world, etc. And so it seems like it was a complete life of privilege and so a lot of the struggles that she hid throughout her life have only come out more recently in the kinds of letters weÕve seen her writing with all of her correspondents. So maybe with all that background in mind, we can turn to this poem and think about what is the structure of restraint that guides it. This is a very formal poem and the form is a villanelle. Can you tell us what a villanelle is and how it works?

Joanne:

Yes, I love even the word Òvillanelle,Ó it comes from an Italian word, Òvillanella,Ó which means ÒcountryÓ or Òrustic.Ó ThatÕs actually where we get our English word Òvillain.Ó Hundreds of years ago, ÒvillainÓ actually meant Òoh, you country person.Ó

Abram:

[Laughs] I had no idea!Ê

Joanne:Ê

I know, so itÕs a very old form, hundreds of years old and it has its origins in France and Italy. And like the sonnet, the villanelle is written in iambic pentameter, so: da-Dum, da-Dum, da-Dum, da-Dum, da-Dum. Right, that really steady beat. Unlike the sonnet, the villanelle has a song-like refrain that keeps appearing, sometimes with variation, in a sort of alternating way from one stanza to the next. Now, the way to create a successful villanelle is to really latch on to some kind of two-line sentence of aphoristic wisdom that can provide an anchor for the refrain in the villanelle. ItÕs very, very difficult to do and most of us failÉ [both laugh] É I have tried many many times and have failed many many times. So I am here to say it is incredibly difficult, but thatÕs all the more reason to celebrate those poets who are able to do it really well.Ê

Abram:Ê

ThatÕs great, so maybe just to give a few examples, perhaps the one most people will be familiar with is Dylan ThomasÕ ÒDo not go gentle into that good night É Rage, rage against the dying of the light.Ó For those who know that poem, they remember the way that it comes back, it comes back, it comes back throughout that poem. There are five stanzas in a villanelle, the first four are three lines long and the last one is four lines long. The first stanza begins by setting up the refrain in the first line and the third line, so we call that a1 and a2 and between a1 and a2 is b. And b sets up a rhyme scheme thatÕs going to be followed all the way through. So this sounds very complicatedÉ andÊ it is! [Both laugh] This is why itÕs very difficult to write one well that doesnÕt sound incredibly stilted and forced and a failure. [Laughing continues] To be blunt.Ê

Joanne:

Well, it almost sounds like a math problem more than a poem, doesn't it?

Abram:

Yeah, right.

Joanne:

But even thatÕs important because this is where formal verse has value. So, I think sometimes when people who are new to poetic forms look at the form they feel like Òugh, this is so rigid, itÕs so controlled,Ó but sometimes, especially with intense emotional or intellectual material or chaotic material, finding that form to anchor the chaos is absolutely essential to its articulation, does that make sense?

Abram:
Yeah, and it seems to directly impinge upon how we read this poem, which is so much about containing the chaos, processing the chaos, making it something that can be processed.Ê

Joanne:

Yeah, would you like to start by maybe even just looking at that first tercet of the poem, the first three lines?

Abram:

Absolutely, so if you think about this poem, in the first line of this poem, ÒThe art of losing isnÕt hard to master.Ó WeÕre supposed to be in iambic pentameter, which means weÕre supposed to have ten syllables in the line: da-Duh, da-Duh, da-Duh, da-Duh, da-Dah. And we are almost there. ItÕs almost absolutely perfect iambic pentameter, Òthe-ART of-LO sing-IS nÕt-HARD to-MA...ster. [Both laugh] ItÕs like something went wrong, so whatÕs really super interesting about that first line is that itÕs not quite Òmastered.Ó

Joanne:

And itÕs not because Elizabeth Bishop canÕt do it, we know she can do it, sheÕs so good at that precision. However, if this is a poem that is presenting advice on how to lose things, and doesnÕt have a mastery of the iambic pentameter line, already you wonder if you should believe it, right?

Abram:

Mmhmm. Well, and as you were pointing out before we started recording, what exactly is the art of losing? I mean is losing a kind of art? It seems like losing is what happens when youÕre art-lessÉÊ

Joanne:

Yes!

Abram:

É or that you havenÕt mastered something is how you lose things. How is losing a possible art in and of itself?

Joanne:

Well, itÕs completely counterintuitive. Everything I associate with loss is usually negative and something to be avoided and yet here, sheÕs suggesting that it can be a kind of art.Ê

Abram:

So, we get:

ÒThe art of losing isnÕt hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.Ó

How do you understand this first stanza as setting up the poem that follows?

Joanne:

This is what I mean about setting up theoretical or aphoristic sentences that convey some kind of theory or wisdom, right? And so this feels like a couple of generalized statements. The first is, Òwhat IÕm about to teach you is actually not that difficult to do.Ó Already, there is something that animates things that makes them losable. So why donÕt we embrace it and not call is a disaster, itÕs a very provocative, strange way to begin this poem and it sets up axioms that I then want to see return perhaps differently throughout the poem.Ê

Abram:

ThatÕs great yeah, and then we move into that second stanza and as weÕve talked about many times on this podcast, stanza comes from the Italian meaning room and each stanza kinda forms a certain room in this poem. So the second room in this poem, we now move into commands:

ÒLose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isnÕt hard to master.Ó

So weÕve got these commands that are telling us what to practice, how to train, how to begin to get this art ourselves.Ê

Joanne:

Look, too, at what Bishop is doing with enjambment and caesura. So enjambment occurs when there isnÕt punctuation at the end of a poetic line, caesura occurs when there is a deep pause or punctuation in the middle of a poetic line. The reason thatÕs important to mention now is because look what she does: ÒLose something every day.Ó Pause. ÒAccept the fluster
of lost door keys,Ó Pause. Òthe hour badly spent.Ó Period. What sheÕs doing there is sheÕs messing with the iambic pentameter to make sure that she creates variation so you donÕt get bored with it, so it doesnÕt feel monotonous, right?


Abram:

Absolutely, and the other thing she does here, again, following from the first stanza: sheÕs masterfully unmasterful.Ê

Joanne:

Yeah.

Abram:

And so the first stanza we talked about how that first line goes on one syllable too long. Well here, you have whatÕs sometimes called a ÒslantÓ rhyme or an ÒoffÓ rhyme. ÒFlusterÓ is supposed to rhyme with Òmaster.Ó But it doesnÕt quite rhyme and that slant rhyme shows us that she is herself, despite her sort of authoritative voice, a bit flustered as weÕre getting going. And if you look down the poem, there are other places where this recurs. So in the fourth stanza, Òmy last oarÓ is supposed to rhyme with Òmaster.Ó And then two stanzas later ÒgestureÓ is supposed to rhyme [with it.] And so these slant rhymes, these off rhymes show that this is a poetic speaker who is trying to say upfront Òlook, look, this is so easy, IÕm a master of this, just follow my lead.Ó And at the same time, the poem is masterfully showing that this is a thing that is overwhelming the speaker that cannot be mastered.Ê

Joanne:

So she starts with things, right, Òaccept the fluster of lost door keys,Ó right. That seems like something that all of us have done about a million times and then, as we proceed through the poem, the stakes get a little bit higher, donÕt they? What happens next?

Abram:

Right, so she tries to push you further in that third stanza, ÒThen practice losing farther, losing faster: places, and names, and where it was you meant to travel.Ó Now weÕve gone from door keys to some more personal memories, right, when we think of people who have lost the memory of having traveled to certain places, or even more sadly the folks who begin to forget names and especially the names of loved ones. And so now weÕre starting to think, Òwait, is this an art of losing here that we want to master?Ó

Joanne:

But also, sheÕs starting to align loss with regret, which is very powerful. ÒWhere it was you meant
to travel.Ó How many of us have lists of things we meant to do or places we meant to go or attachments that we meant to have that we didnÕt have and what starts to happen when those losses start to accumulate, how does that chip away at us in some way? She suggests with the refrain that none of these will bring disaster. They might not bring disaster, but theyÕll certainly bring regret, right?

Abram:

Mmhmm. And then she turns in the next stanza and says ÒI lost my motherÕs watch.Ó And suddenly an ÒIÓ has emerged. And something very personal has been lost.

Joanne:

Look at what she includes there, she goes from that domesticity and commonness of Òmy motherÕs watchÓ to Òthree loved houses.Ó Look what she does, ÒI lost my mothers watch and look, my last or next to last of three loved houses went.Ó What? ThatÕs an enormous loss, thatÕs a giant financial loss. ItÕs a loss at least of a place that IÕm sure had some incredible importance or significance to the speaker, right. I also love what youÕre saying that this is the first appearance of the word ÒI.Ó In the context of the 1950s and 60s when confessional poetry was the norm, the fashion in American poetry, you have a poet who is so reluctant to say very much about the ÒIÓ at all. So when you see it, youÕre like wait a minute, does that give me some insight into something about her sensibility.

Abram:

And then you see this refrain return and this is where the villanelleÕs strength comes in, the more this refrain appears and especially the way that Bishop uses it in this poem, you get the sense that now sheÕs trying to convince herself.Ê

Joanne:

Yeah, yes. And then the stakes get even higher in the penultimate stanza:

ÒI lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasnÕt a disaster.Ó

I mean how much is a person capable of losing before we can call it a disaster?

Abram:Ê

Right, and before they get broken by all these losses. And here is the first hint of a break, ÒI miss them.Ó And so youÕre getting more and more of a sense of confession, youÕre getting more and more a sense of Òokay, let me admit that losing is not great.Ó

Joanne:

When the speaker says, ÒI lost two cities...some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent,Ó it almost sounds like weÕre living in a fairy tale. No one owns cities, no one owns rivers and continents, right. But again, I want to resist the urge to read this as entirely autobiographical and yet I canÕt help but think of Elizabeth Bishop as a wanderer, as someone who was always desperately searching for a feeling of home and yet never quite finding it for a very long time. And so in that context I feel like this is a generalized statement that can be powerful for me as a reader but also becomes even more poignant the more I understand about her life and her work.Ê

Abram:

And now you turn to the last stanza, youÕve gone all the way up to losing continents, and then you get this dash. And it says, Òeven losing you.Ó So in other words, losing you is more than losing realms and rivers and continents. By the logic of the poem, we have gone even further up and yet weÕre going further into that personal, to what is in a certain sense very small. The parenthetical that follows, Òthe joking voice, a gesture I love.Ó Just losing that gesture is more than losing an entire continent.Ê

ÒÑEven losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shanÕt have lied. ItÕs evident
the art of losingÕs not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.Ó

What do you see there?

Joanne:

Thank goodness you read those lines, I donÕt know if I could read them a second time [both laugh] it just breaks me up every time! This is one of Elizabeth BishopÕs last poems, actually. She wrote this toward the end of her life and by this point Soares, her partner of many years Lota Soares had died. That took an enormous toll on Elizabeth Bishop, I also feel like these are the lines that show me how close the poetic speaker comes to disaster but that the command to oneÕs self to write and the fact that the poem has been written is a testament to our ability to go on and to exist.Ê

Abram:

Mmhmm, I mean this is partly what the villanelle, the formal structure allows you to do. YouÕve got this refrain, itÕs repeating, itÕs repeating, and repeating, Òthe art of losing isnÕt hard to masterÉ the art of losing isnÕt hard to master,Ó and then in the last bit, thinking of this one person she says, Òthe art of losingÕs not too hard to master.Ó And weÕve talked before in other poems, Robert HaydenÕs poem for example, how that simple word ÒtooÓ can have profound implications. And here, itÕs inserted and it restructures the refrain. So sheÕs no longer asserting what she asserted at the beginning, sheÕs saying Òwell itÕs not too hard to master.Ó Even if you think about the rhyme, what is ÒmasterÓ supposed to rhyme with, Òdisaster.Ó Well what does it mean to Òmaster disaster?Ó

Joanne:

YeahÉ

Abram:

And is that something we want to do or is it the disaster thatÕs mastering us? And part of the craft of this poem is showing the reciprocal relationship between those two words throughout where youÕre losing control and regaining control, and losing control and trying to regain control all the way through. And just to add one more thing, that last line, I mean what she does there in the parenthetical to break up the refrain, Ò(write it!)Ó sheÕs telling herself to write it. You get now the revelation of how hard she is pushing herself to create this poem that will process her grief, Òthough it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.Ó

Joanne:

It feels like sheÕs addressing us as readers at the beginning of the poem but itÕs so clear by the end sheÕs addressing herself. This is a struggle sheÕs having within herself and weÕre watching it and itÕs very very powerful for that reason.Ê

Well, with all of that in mind, would you like to read this poem again?

Abram:

Yes.Ê

[Click here for the poem ÒOne ArtÓ: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47536/one-art]Ê

Joanne:

Wow. Thank you, thank you, that is so good. For more information about Elizabeth Bishop, her life, her magnificent work, please visit our website at poetryforall.fireside.fm

Abram:

And you can subscribe to Poetry For All wherever you get your podcasts. Please be sure to follow us on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter.Ê

Joanne:

Thank you for listening.

Abram:

Thank you.Ê