thoughts when writing "One Art" were always on villanelles. "I wanted to write a villanelle all my life but I never could. I'd start them but for some reason, I never could finish them." You can see this intent when examining the original drafts where one can make out the skeleton of a villanelle; she chose her rhymes and refrains first and filled in the rest Brett Millier has assessed that "Bishop conceived the poem as a villanelle from the start, and the play of "twos" within it - two rivers, two cities, the lost lover means not being "two" anymore - suggests that a two-rhyme villanelle is a form appropriate to the content." Themes Bishop instills one main theme in this poem, loss, which has consequences that form branching themes of learning, regret, and travel. Loss Nearly explicitly stated, Bishop writes to explore the theme of loss as she reflects on her losses. Using the villanelle form, Bishop emphasizes the inevitability of loss when she sets up a rigid structure, and then repeatedly breaks it, adding hyper-beats or eliding syllables, using half-rhymes, and an altered final refrain, to name a few. Loss is felt in this poem through Bishop's vague, but not so vague, examples of things everyone loses or can love; loss becomes a moment in the grander commentary on human existence which art pursues. This concept draws back to the title, loss is an art and the art of losing is learned through loss, engrained in every day life and present in the most important moments of our lives. This is exactly the progression that the poem follows, and it acts as a philosophical theory of life and loss, drawing examples from her life. Learning What satisfies and consoles Bishop in this process of writing, as well as losing, is that she is learning and enhancing a skill, the skill of loss. It is just as the saying goes, "practice makes perfect". This theme is almost an antithesis of the theme of regret, and is the main take away from this lesson on lessons of loss. The objectivity in the phrase, "The art of losing isn't hard to master", lends itself to the lesson Bishop is trying to convey; if a teacher used language that indicated bias, their entire lesson becomes compromised. The intricacies of teaching and learning are felt as deeply as loss, and Bishop's poem