One Art

Elizabeth Bishop

At first glance Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night seemed, to me, the most traditional use of the villanelle form. Because of that I considered it the best. However, One Art by Elizabeth Bishop was the most powerful to me, and at second glance, I find that it might make better use of the villanelle form than the other two more traditional poems. Both Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night, and The Walking are incredibly vague. The former refers to “wise men,” “good men,” “wild men,” and “grave men” and manages to never reveal anything about any of them, and even less about the father. The Walking seems to be a poem about a journey, yet it almost journeys in circles. Each of these poems contain components of the modern villanelle, however I find, that One Art contains, and makes better use of, more components. Mark Strand writes that the villanelle “…refuses to tell a story. It circles around and around, refusing to go forward in any kind of linear development, and so suggesting at the deepest level, powerful recurrences of mood and emotion and memory.” One Art does this better than either of the other poems. It hints at stories, rather than avoids them and has an end to the journey, albeit no linear development, unlike the walking.

While the other poems may adhere to the form more closely than One Art, it manages better than any of them to use the form to convey it’s meaning.