Loss
The poem's central theme is loss, and the issue of how to handle loss. Nearly every other theme dealt with in "One Art" falls under the umbrella of loss, partly because the poem's definition of loss and losing is so broad. It includes the misplacing of objects, the feeling of nostalgia for faraway places, and the death of loved ones. Throughout the poem, the speaker tries to understand the appropriate level of distress and sensitivity to feel following each of these types of loss. They argue that no loss is insurmountable, and that even the most dramatic losses can be coped with. However, the speaker's growing hesitation and difficulty are apparent, giving the impression that their losses, and perhaps loss in general, can be debilitating. While the speaker's assertion that all losses can be handled with equanimity is self-evidently suspect, the poem does prompt readers to interrogate the various "levels" of loss: a lost door-key may be a mild loss and a lost loved one a major one, but at what point does a loss become a major disaster?
Love
Bishop represents love as the ever-present flip side to loss. Each time the speaker loves something or someone, it is eventually lost, such that the risk of loss is an inevitable part of love. Moreover, the greater the speaker's love for a given thing or person, the greater the pain of its loss. Therefore, as the poem lists losses in ascending order according to the pain and magnitude of the loss, it is by definition also listing them in order of how much love the speaker feels for them. We can see this by looking for the word "love" in the poem. It does not appear at all in the first three stanzas, where the speaker is discussing relatively small losses. However, the fourth stanza references "three loved houses." However, the use of passive voice dampens the intensity of the verb "love" here. In the next stanza, the speaker describes the "two lost cities" as "lovely ones," once again using the word "love" in a modified and milder form. Finally, in the last stanza, when describing their greatest loss of all, the speaker uses the phrase "I love." This direct and intense statement of love matches the intensity of the loss being portrayed.
Transience
One source of the speaker's loss is their physical transience. The speaker's tendency to move through space—either by choice or by force, the poem never clarifies which—brings them into contact with a huge variety of places. This inevitably means that they experience the loss of a wide variety of places. Included here are houses, cities, and even a continent: the speaker's movement from place to place inhibits them from remaining in any given spot. The spatial focus of the poem itself is somewhat transient, with words like "vaster" and "faster" in particular indicating a frenzied movement from one vantage point to the next. The reader, then, experiences on a microscopic level the impermanence and transience that the speaker describes.
Denial
This poem, as a villanelle, is structured around two repeating claims. Each of these two refrains claims, in different wording, that loss is mundane, straightforward, and, most importantly, not very upsetting. However, the speaker's confidence in making this argument visibly wavers as the poem continues. As their losses mount, their claim to be unfazed by them appears less and less sound. The phrase "Write it!" near the close of the poem decisively reveals that the speaker is having trouble making the claim that loss is easy to master. This speaker seems to be repeating ideas that contradict their actual feelings, in an attempt to suppress and deny their internal pain. However, this denial isn't successful: the more the speaker denies their feelings, the more those feelings are made manifest on the page.
Writing and Art
Rather than framing loss as a passive experience to be endured, the speaker presents loss as a literal art, like playing a musical instrument or, for that matter, writing a poem. They argue that loss can be "mastered"—the very opposite of passive endurance—and that it requires constant, daily practice. Moreover, the speaker argues, loss, much like any other art form, can be performed at multiple levels. An amateur might be able to lose an hour or a watch, but a true master can lose a city or a person.
Yet once again, the line "Write it!" reveals that the relationship between art and loss is more complex than the speaker explicitly acknowledges. In this line, the speaker appears to be urging themself to finish the poem (which is in itself an artistic expression of the idea that loss can be mastered). However, the imperative "write it" reveals that the speaker is having trouble writing the poem, perhaps because they don't actually believe that loss can be mastered. Therefore, readers may conclude the poem itself is an artistic, even artificial attempt to deny and obscure the reality of loss—which in fact cannot be mastered, cannot be perfected with practice, and often must simply be endured.
The Banal Nature of Grief
The speaker of this poem claims that grief for a person is similar to, and little more debilitating than, various everyday losses or wastes. On the one hand, this creates an ironic juxtaposition, and the speaker's tone reveals that the grief they feel for their loved one is actually very different from other forms of loss. Yet on the other hand, the many kinds of loss grouped together in this poem drive home a counterintuitive point: that while grieving a death may be more painful than, say, losing a set of keys, the experiences are not altogether dissimilar. In other words, even the most dramatic, upsetting grief shares certain characteristics with the most banal and mundane losses. Rather than imply that these experiences are all exactly the same, however, Bishop hints that these losses occupy spots on a very long continuum, with a great deal of difference as losses progress from small to large.
Memory
Of all the forms of loss discussed in this poem, the most abstract and unquantifiable is memory. The speaker describes losing "places, and names, and where it was you meant/to travel," all clear references to slips or gaps in memory. Later, they mention the loss of a "mother's watch." This refers to the loss of an object, but also hints that memories of the mother herself have been lost or eroded (especially because the watch is itself an item that measures the passage of time). Here, Bishop articulates a paradoxical relationship between memory and loss. On the one hand, when something is lost, memories of it are the only thing that is retained. On the other hand, memories themselves can become lost.
