[Tim Murphy]

Carter’s Les Barricades Mysterieuses

Generally speaking, I do not esteem the villanelle in English. The most famous, Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night, I adored in my teens. Now I find it simply bombastic. There seem to be villanelles running in their obsessive little circles everywhere in recent years. It is doubtless the second most popular form (after the sonnet) at Eratosphere’s Deep End. Damn few are any good. (I will concede that worthy villanelles by our current guests at Distinguished Guests all defy my prejudice.) But generally, the villanelles I read are sloppy, with nothing like adherence to the tradition of dutifully repeating a repetend (more like re-writing it while keeping the end word!); or if traditional, the repetends hammer home some obvious point to the point that it is a blessed relief when we get to the quatrain and the poem is finally finished.

I have never written one, and after reading Jared Carter’s slim volume of thirty-two villanelles, Les Barricades Mysterieuses, I am even more determined never to try. Not because Carter confirms my low opinion of the villanelle in English, but because he explodes it, blows it to smithereens. LBC consists of thirty two villanelles. In four parts, each part containing eight poems, the larger structure symphonic, the parts themselves octaves of poems. It’s probably the most perfectly organized, balanced, and symmetrical book of poetry I have ever read. But arrangement would do it no good if the constituent poems weren’t superb. Here are three.

Improvisation

To improvise, first let your fingers stray
across the keys like travelers in snow:
each time you start, expect to lose your way.

You’ll find no staff to lean on, none to play
among the drifts the wind has left in rows.
To improvise, first let your fingers stray

beyond the path. Give up the need to say
which way is right, or what the dark stones show;
each time you start, expect to lose your way.

And what the stillness keeps, do not betray;
the one who listens is the one who knows.
To improvise, first let your fingers stray;

out over emptiness is where things weigh
the least. Go there, believe a current flows
each time you start: expect to lose your way

Risk is the pilgrimage that cannot stay;
the keys grow silent in their smooth repose.
To improvise, first let your fingers stray.
Each time you start, expect to lose your way.

From Les Barricades Mystérieuses. First published in Poetry.


Ford

A place of crossing over, where the river
starts its turn – a drift of glacial rocks
reveals a path, within the current’s shadow,

to the other side. Here, streams of minnows
slip through the shallows, as if to mark
a place of crossing. Over where the river

broods, near the far bank, a fallen cedar,
bleached and smooth, stripped of its bark,
reveals a path. Within the current’s shadow,

up close, the rocks have no special order;
you must choose, with each step you take,
a place of crossing over. Where the river

tangles and snarls but fails to scatter
the stones – that fracture, that break,
reveals a path within. The current’s shadow

overwhelms you, there’s no sign to follow,
no pattern now – your own momentum makes
a place of crossing over, where the river
reveals a path within the current’s shadow.

From Les Barricades Mystérieuses. First published in South Carolina Review.

Interlude

Here is the spring I promised we would find
if we came back this way – a hollow space
beneath the hillside, waiting all this time

for us to angle through the leaves, and climb
down to the ledge, to where it slows its pace.
Here is the spring I promised we would find,

with elderberry blossoming, and thyme
and saxifrage along the limestone face.
Beneath the hillside, waiting all this time,

the falls, in overflowing steps, combine
to form an unexpected stopping-place.
Here is the spring I promised we would find:

across the pool, the accidental lines
and endless circles merge – a constant grace,
beneath the hillside, waiting. All this time

has brought us here – to listen to the pines,
to drink, to watch the water striders race.
Here is the spring I promised we would find
beneath the hillside, waiting all this time.

From Les Barricades Mystérieuses. First published in Free Lunch.

I’m not going to analyze these poems individually, just make some observations on Carter’s strategy to employ the form and on the book as a whole. Rather than using his repetends to bombastic effect, to hammer points home, Carter employs them to hypnotic effect. Rarely is a repetend a complete sentence, like the repetends in Dylan Thomas’ famous poem. (Actually three of these six are sentences, but in the entire first fourth of the book only three reps are sentences.) But always, always, a Carter repetend can be broken in two to link to its preceding and succeeding lines in fresh and arresting ways. And as you will see from Ford, by far the loosest of the poems pasted above, Carter sometimes employs slant rhymes so distant that they are merely consonantal or assonantal ghosts of rhyme. Improvisation, on the other hand, shows how strict he can be. Though there he employs both O and OSE rhymes, they are so placed as to consistitute perfect rhymes within their territories in the poem. Note also that this is not the iambic stomp that has marched its martial way through most of our formal friendly venues the last decade. The rhythms are highly conversational and reveal Carter’s deep obligation to the blank verse of Robert Frost. All the foregoing strategies are employed by Carter to hypnotize his reader with villanelles which are never obvious, labored or boring.

The book itself is Gothic, Borgesian in its concerns, and oh highest praise! in its effect. But it is singularly Jared Carter’s; for everywhere are the flora and imagery of Mississinewa County, Indiana, so familiar to students of Carter’s larger ouevre. Anyone who cares for or writes or aspires to write villanelles should read this book.

Rather than enrich Amazon, you can order toll free from Cleveland State's Poetry Center at 888-2786473. Visa and Mastercard, etc.




[This message has been edited by Tim Murphy (edited November 27, 2008).]

[Catherine Chandler]

Tim,

Thank you for introducing this interesting topic - the villanelle, and in particular, several of Jared Carter's poems. I found all three wonderful, and "Improvisation" especially so. It not only fulfills all of your criteria for a great villanelle, but also has some very wonderful lines (example: "You'll find no staff to lean on") which, as a pianist, I fully appreciated. I agree wholeheartedly with you about the Dylan Thomas villanelle. I, too, adored it as an adolescent, but am rather less enthusiastic now.

In my own experience, I've only written two, and one is simply a parody of Bishop's "One Art" published in Umbrella's last issue. The theme of the other, "Convergence", published several years ago, is my obsession with the loss of my first love to the priesthood. It took over thirty years and various forms until I was happy enough with it not to go back and fiddle with it again. I never planned on it being a villanelle, it just sort of "happened".

Anyone who can write a good villanelle has my respect and admiration. I must mention that there was one posted a while back on The Deep End about a man mowing the lawn which was absolutely hilarious.

Julie Kane has written an interesting article on the villanelle. Here's a link:

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/modern_.../64.4kane.html

[Tim Murphy]

"across the keys like travellers in snow," is a great line too. Cathy, would you post Convergence, please? You have to read this elegant little book to believe it. There aren't a whole lot of copies left, and I doubt it will ever be reprinted. Here's a link to Clavichord, which Carter regards as his best keyboard poem, and one of his best ever. I 'bout fell over when I first encountered in LBC: http://jaredcarter.com/poems/8/
While you're there, explore his excellent website.

[This message has been edited by Tim Murphy (edited November 27, 2008).]

[Catherine Chandler]

Tim,
As requested, here's "Convergence", first published in Harp-Strings Poetry Journal, Volume 16, Number 2, Autumn 2004. I took some liberties with the repetends, but they're not huge.

Convergence


If ever some day we were to meet again,
should, but for once, my wildest dream come true,
say, on the street or in the subway train,

would you think me unregenerate, profane
to seize this blessed bone? What would you do
if ever some day we were to meet again?

Perhaps you’d flee or otherwise abstain
from what could be an awkward interview
on a busy street or in a subway train.

But when you’d noticed what your old disdain,
ordained and consecrated by the few
who prayed that we would never meet again,

had done, you might declare it false and vain –
your premise of the pulpit and the pew –
right on that street or in that subway train.

Enough of dreams. My heart cannot sustain
them – Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and you,
Lost One, whom I shall never meet again,
on any street or any subway train.

[Janet Kenny]

Tim,
I became tired of expressing my lonely opinion that the beauty of a villanelle is in moving between unchanging repetends. I think you are too harsh on Dylan Thomas's villanelle. It is itself. Nobody dismisses trumpet voluntaries because they discover string quartets. It is, in my opinion, a fine poem of its own kind.

[This message has been edited by Janet Kenny (edited November 27, 2008).]

[Mary Meriam]

I like Janet's villanelles.

[Janet Kenny]

Core
Thanks Mary.

[Andrew Frisardi]

Thanks for posting these, Tim. I'm looking forward to reading this whole collection of Carter. He's a poet I've read only in journals, always liking what I see.

Your analysis of the villanelles is spot on, I think. Carter does an excellent job of keeping the poems from taking on that static quality that is so easy to fall into with forms like this. Variation within the repetition is the key, just like rhythm and meter.

[Tim Murphy]

Thanks for posting that Cathy. I lost my Yale boyfriend the same way, not to the priesthood but to Opus Dei. For a decade I tried to write a poem about it. Maybe it should have been a villanelle.

[Kevin Cutrer]

Thanks for starting this thread, Tim. I, too, had an adolescent crush on Thomas's famous villanelle, and I still revisit that one from time to time. But Auden wrote wonderful villanelles, and one of my favorites is "Prospects" by Anthony Hecht. And then there's Carters LBM (has anyone heard the piece of music the book is named for? It's exquisite).

I agree with your assessment of most villanelles published these days. The form is often used either as light verse or as a vehicle for philosophical subjects. I love the form when it's serious, and it sometimes engenders such fine lines as Carter's "the one who listens is the one who knows." This reminds me of Roethke's "I learn by going where I need to go," from another fine example of the form. There's something about the form that makes it fertile for these short, matter-of-fact pronouncements that act as stones jutting out of the rapids, around which the water crashes.

I've written horrible villanelles, and the resultant brain damage from knocking my head against the wall only makes me reckless to one day try again.




[This message has been edited by Kevin Cutrer (edited November 28, 2008).]