Tags

,

Welcome to dVerse, the poets’ pub! It’s always good to see you here.

Tonight we are looking at another form – the villanelle! I think it’s a beautiful form, but it has its challenges. Let me tell you a bit about my personal relationship with the villanelle, and something about its history and structure. I’ll throw in some examples along the way.

It turns out I loved a villanelle before I ever heard of it as a form. I stopped doing Eng Lit when I was 16, and never encountered villanelles before that. I didn’t read much poetry – I was doing sciences, and then went off to medical school, where I had much more exciting things to do. I still scribbled a bit, in secret, obviously.

Some amazing genius had the idea of putting poetry on the London Underground which is how I came to meet this poem:

One Art

BY ELIZABETH BISHOP

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;

so many things seem filled with the intent

to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

 

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster

of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.

The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

 

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:

places, and names, and where it was you meant

to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

 

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or

next-to-last, of three loved houses went.

The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

 

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,

some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.

I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

 

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture

I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident

the art of losing’s not too hard to master

though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

This spoke to me so powerfully, at a time when I was away from home, finding out who I really was, doing all that young adult stuff. I still love it as a poem. I had no idea it was a villanelle, but I loved the repetition and the pattern of it.

When my granny died, I read a poem at her funeral. Turns out I chose a “demi” villanelle:

JEWELS IN MY HAND

Sasha Moorsom (1931-1993)

I hold by dead friends like jewels in my hand
Watching their brilliance gleam against my palm
Turquoise and emerald, jade, a golden band

All ravages of time they can withstand
Like talismans their grace keeps me from harm
I hold dead friends like jewels in my hand

I see them standing in some borderland
Their heads half-turned, waiting for my arm
Turquoise and emerald, jade, a golden band

I’m not afraid they will misunderstand
My turning to them like a magic charm
I hold my dear friends like jewels in my hand
Turquoise and emerald, jade, a golden band.

Again, I loved the repetition and the structure. This is still one of my favourite poems.

I didn’t find out what a villanelle really was until I started my poetry blog, specifically to do NaPoWriMo (coming up next month!). Interestingly, the villanelle was originally a pastoral poem with no fixed structure. It wasn’t until the 1600s that the form became fixed. It’s been in and out of fashion, and reached a peak of popularity in the 1980s and 90s thanks to New Formalism. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Formalism)

This is what Wikipedia says about the form:

A villanelle (also known as villanesque)[1] is a nineteen-line poetic form consisting of five tercets followed by a quatrain. There are two refrains and two repeating rhymes, with the first and third line of the first tercet repeated alternately until the last stanza, which includes both repeated lines. The villanelle is an example of a fixed verse form. The word derives from Latin, then Italian, and is related to the initial subject of the form being the pastoral.

I’m not sure how helpful that is. I’ll translate:

A villanelle has 19 lines – 5 three line stanzas and a final four line stanza. It has a definite rhyme and repeating structure. Let me demonstrate with one of my own:

A1        The tastes of summer float upon the breeze,
b          Look, and you’ll find them, here among
A2        The tang of berries, ripped up basil leaves:

a          Lick salty skin from playing in the sea’s
b          Wild rolling waves the whole day long –
A1        The tastes of summer float upon the breeze –

a          Picnics laid out beneath green shading trees,
b          Faint woodsmoke tang, that floats and weaves among
A2        The tang of berries, ripped up basil leaves –

a          Vanilla kisses soothing grass-scratched knees,
b          Wild thyme, the flavour of a sky lark’s song,
A1        The tastes of summer float upon the breeze –

a          Pods popping, bright green shiny peas
b          Bounce on your palm, and roll upon your tongue,
A2        The tang of berries, ripped up basil leaves.

a          Relish it all, before the summer leaves,
b          Flavours fade quickly, and the nights grow long,
A1        The tastes of summer float upon the breeze,
A2        The tang of berries, ripped up basil leaves.

It’s acceptable to modify the repeated lines a little – look at Elizabeth Bishop’s poem for an example of this.

If you want some more examples, have a look at the Poetry Foundation website. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/learn/glossary-terms/villanelle

And as a final treat, here’s Leonard Cohen and Villanelle for our time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UzvVOy0Dq8

This is a month long prompt, so there’s time to get feedback and revise. Here’s what to do:

  • Write a villanelle (!)
  • Post it on Mr Linky – click on the link below to add your name and enter the direct URL to your poem.
  • On your blog, please provide a link back to dVerse. This enables others to enjoy our prompts, and grows our readership.
  • Read some villanelles, written by your fellow dVerse poets – and give them feedback – that’s how we learn and grow.
  • If you promote your poem on social media, please use the tag #dversepoets
  • Enjoy poetry – writing and reading!