Villanelles

Largely, the intended effect of the villanelle is to show a thought process as opposed to a narrative or a story; the poet's lines are repeated several times and they rhyme with only a few specific sounds. Of the three given, the villanelle that seems to embody this style (though not necessarily the very strict structure) the most is "One Art" by Elizabeth Bishop, a poem about losing things ranging from the door keys to "you," or an important person in the speaker's life. Bishop writes a tangled thought process that eventually leads to the root of her discomfort--the aforementioned loss of "you," someone important in her life. Up until then, she writes of losing keys, losing an hour, losing dreams, losing her mother's watch; the order of the otherwise random objects lends to the mood of the wandering villanelle, lacking a coherent arc.

While the other two poems follow the format of a villanelle somewhat better than does this one, "One Art" gives the reader a concept of a train of thought, drifting, it seems, over objects seen in the room or those that are the first to come to mind. The reader will inevitably be able to identify with the increasing amounts of loss, from everyday objects up to the difficult concept of lost dreams, as well as being able to understand the jumping of the mind to various subjects, all connected through the one common string of loss.