Elizabeth Bishop

Creative Writing (Poetry)

 Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979)
• American poet & painter
• Perfectionist ─ did not write
prolifically ─ spent long periods
of time polishing her work ─
published only 101 poems
during her lifetime
• Impressive command on the
craft of verse: precise
descriptions, tranquil
observations, technical
brilliance & formal variety
• Pulitzer Prize (1956)
• Taught at Harvard University
• Considered a “poet’s poet”
• A major force in 20th-century
world poetry
One Art
• Meditates on the art of losing
• Builds up a small catalogue of losses: house keys and a mother's
watch, before climaxing in the loss of houses, land and a loved one.
• Part-autobiographical poem & mirrors the actual losses Elizabeth
Bishop experienced
• Father died when she was a baby; mother suffered nervous
breakdown; the young poet had to live with her relatives and never
saw her mother again; she lost her partner to suicide
• 'One Art' carefully if casually records these events, beginning
innocently enough with an ironic play on 'the art', before moving on
to more serious losses. It culminates in the personal loss of a loved
one, and the admission that, yes, this may look like a disaster.
• 'One Art' is a villanelle: consists of five tercets
rhyming aba and a quatrain of abaa
• Traditionally the villanelle is in iambic
pentameter, each line having five stresses or
beats and an average of ten syllables
The art / of los / ing is / n't hard / to master
• Most lines unstressed endings
• The second line of each stanza solidifies the
whole with full end rhyme
• The opening line is repeated as the last line of
the second and fourth tercets
• The third line of the initial tercet is repeated as
the last line of the third and fifth tercets
• The opening line and the third line together
become the refrain which is repeated in the last
two lines of the quatrain
• Elizabeth Bishop slightly modified the lines, but
minor changes are allowed within the basic
villanelle.
 Villanelle
• A highly structured poem
• Five tercets (3 lines) followed by a quatrain (4
lines), with two repeating rhymes and two refrains
• The first and third lines of the opening tercet are
repeated alternately in the last lines of the
succeeding stanzas; then in the final stanza, the
refrain serves as the poem’s two concluding lines
• Using capitals for the refrains and lowercase letters
for the rhymes, the form could be expressed as: A1
b A2 / a b A1 / a b A2 / a b A1 / a b A2 / a b A1 A2.