One Art

1. Bishop wrote “One Art” in the form of a villanelle, a long-established type of poetry that is traditionally light-hearted in tone and subject matter. In accordance with the ‘rules’ of a villanelle, “One Art” contains 19 lines divided into six stanzas; the first and third lines rhyme and repeat in alternating stanzas until the concluding quatrain, in which both lines appear. In a brief essay, discuss how the fixed form of the villanelle serves to amplify the themes or concerns of Bishop’s poem. Using examples from the poem, point out the ways in which it fails to uphold the rules of the villanelle, and explain why this loss of control of the form is significant. Also discuss Bishop's possible reasons for choosing to address the subject of loss in a form of poetry usually associated with frivolity and trivial wordplay.

2. Explain the title of the poem. Begin by considering the definition of the word “art,” and how it relates to other terms like “artifice” and “artfulness.” What is the “one art” to which the speaker of the poem explicitly refers? Although the title seems to single out one art, to what other form(s) of art does the poem, as a whole, indirectly allude? How can these different “arts” be understood as “one art”? Support your ideas and arguments with textual evidence.

3. "Do not go gentle into that good night" by Dylan Thomas is one of the best-known villanelles in the English language. Like Bishop’s “One Art,” Thomas’s villanelle is not a mere exercise in light-hearted wordplay. The subject of the poem is death, and Thomas wrote it when his father was going blind and dying of cancer. What is the tone of Thomas’s poem, and how does it contrast with that of Bishop’s? As villanelles, both poems contain refrains of two repeating lines, but how do these refrains function differently between the two poems? Both poems deal with devastating loss, but is one more hopeful than the other? If so, why? Discuss these comparisons and contrasts in a well-structured paragraph or paragraphs.

4. Elizabeth Bishop regarded Marianne Moore as a good friend and mentor. In Moore’s poem "Silence," what does the speaker suggest about silence, restraint, and the expression of feelings? How does “One Art” endorse and/or employ restraint? Does Bishop’s poem corroborate the ideas in “Silence” regarding restraint and “the deepest feeling”? Support your ideas with evidence from the poems in a brief paragraph.