I’ve recently paid attention to the sonnet form of poetry, and even wrote a modest entry of my own. Now I’ve been studying the villanelle.
Like a sonnet, a villanelle follows a defined structural form, and therein lies my interest, which is why I’ve been drawn to Pecha Kucha.
As a novelist, I have a lot of creative license with form: you can do anything you want, as long as you keep the reader interested. Sure, most novels follow a protagonist(s) as they encounter complications and the forces of antagonism on their journey to achieve a goal. But the writer can structure a novel in a multitude of ways—end to beginning; various points of view; using letters or texts in the narrative; jumping around in time; dialog-heavy, description-heavy; short chapters, long chapters, no chapters. The choices are endless.
A villanelle adheres to a prescribed form. It comprises nineteen lines—five tercets of three lines each, and one four-line quatrain at the end. There is a fixed rhyming pattern, and the first and third lines of the opening tercet are called the refrain and are repeated alternately in the last lines of the succeeding stanzas. In the final stanza, the refrain is the poem’s two concluding lines.
Most villanelles are written in good old iambic pentameter, meaning ten syllables per line, alternating stressed and unstressed syllables.
That’s a lot of complex rules! But as a student and lover of writing form, I had to give it a try.
But first, some villanelles written by the masters. Most of us are familiar with “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night” by Dylan Thomas, although you might not have known it was a villanelle.
Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Sylvia Plath also wrote villanelles. “Mad Girl’s Love Song” often appears in poetry anthologies.
Mad Girl’s Love Song
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
God topples from the sky, hell’s fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan’s men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
I fancied you’d return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
Don’t You Ever Get The Blues
If you’ve been shunned, abandoned by your muse
If misfortune and shadow cast a pall
Don’t you ever, unbeckoned, get the blues?
A query or command, not yours to choose
Whether it’s one or the other is banal
If you’ve been shunned, abandoned by your muse
Outpouring of words the world does refuse
And your lover no longer is enthralled
Don’t you ever, unbeckoned, get the blues.
Envy green, hot red, all your brilliant hues
And no one awaiting your curtain call
If you’ve been shunned, abandoned by your muse
Snap to, they say, which might only confuse
When asked to explain your missing wherewithal
Don’t you ever, unbeckoned, get the blues?
Stand straight, fight on, this gloom you must refuse
You will bow down but you cannot fall
If you’ve been shunned, abandoned by your muse
Don’t you ever, unbeckoned, get the blues.
