Sarah Ruhl on her latest play Dear Elizabeth, and why the Bishop-Lowell correspondence is so compelling and what poetry can accomplish that theater cannot.

One Art - The Academy of American Poets is the largest membership-based nonprofit organization fostering an appreciation for contemporary poetry and supporting American poets.

‘One Art’ is a famous villanelle by American poet Elizabeth Bishop about coping with the inevitability of loss. The form’s cyclical repetitions accentuate the mounting tension weighing on the speaker as they attempt to anesthetize themselves from all grief or longing.

Possibly her most famous poem, Elizabeth Bishop's,"One Art" is a villanelle, a 6 stanza poem that consists of five tercets (3 line stanzas), and one concluding quatrain (4 line stanza). For more about this challenging poetry form see How To Write a Villanelle.

The best One Art study guide on the planet. The fastest way to understand the poem's meaning, themes, form, rhyme scheme, meter, and poetic devices.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster, some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent. I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster. —Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture . I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident . the art of losing's not too hard to master . though it …

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