Villanelles are villainous,
Sestinas supercilious.
Odes are often odious,
Epics too commodious,
Triolets too literary
Limericks unsanitary.
Pindarics and Petrarchians
Are not for us Ozarkians.
The ballad, whether said or sung,
Better suits the Western tongue.
Some sonnets, I admit, are swell:
Jonson's and Johnson's (Lionel),
Spenser's and Sydney's. Also fine
Are Shakespeare's, Milton's, Mezey's and mine.
************************************
And from Frances Cornford:

In the Backs (at Cambridge)

Too many of the dead, some I knew well,
Have smelt this unforgotten river smell,
Liquid and old and dank;
And on the tree-dark, laquered, slowly passing stream
Have seen the boats come softly as in dream
Past the green bank.
So Camus, reverend sire, came footing slow
three hundred years ago,
And Milton paced the avenue of trees
In miracle of sun and shade as now,
The fresh-attempted glorious cadences
Behind his youthful brow.

Milton and Chaucer, Herbert, Herrick, Gray,
Rupert, and you forgotten others, say—
Are there slow rivers and bridges where you have gone
away?
What has your spirit found?
What wider lot?
Some days in spring do you come back at will,
And tread with weightless feet this ancient ground?
O say, if not,
Why is this air so sacred and so still?







[This message has been edited by Golias (edited November 22, 2006).]

This one is pretty fair.

http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/ubbhtm...ML/000260.html

I'm in general agreement with Quincy, but being meek, wouldn't phrase it with his style. Repetitive forms are particularly painful when only mediocre.

Or worse as in this case

I tried to write a triolet,
tried till the urging went away
though a mild pain remains today.
I tried to write a triolet
it's so repellant people say
I'll no more give it light of day.
I tried to write a triolet,
tried till the urging went away.

I thought perhaps the breakdown of poems submitted for the next The Barefoot Muse (coming soon!) issue might be of interest:

Sonnets: Rejected 107, Accepted 8
Villanelles: Rejected 24, Accepted 1
Sestinas: Rejected 12, Accepted 0
Triolets: Rejected 7, Accepted 1
Other: Rejected 169, Accepted 14

Personally I'm rather partial to triolets. I have one of my own in the next issue of The Absinthe Literary Review (if it ever appears!) called "The F**k You Triolet", which I hope explodes the myth that repetends are always dull...

I'm also quite passionate about sonnets, although I receive plenty of bad ones. Villanelles are tricky. It says something perhaps that the one I accepted is light verse.

Cheers,

Anna, usually lurking

I just tried writing a villanelle straight off the energy of this discussion. I hope this isn't sneaking in an extra post. I wondered does the irregular rhyme disqualify this as a villanelle?

No Disguise

Up comes the sun the moon survives
the light, yet we are not the same,
nor does the light of day disguise

the dying written in our eyes.
We see the thing we dare not name.
Up comes the sun, the moon survives,

although the brilliance deprives
the moon of power without its frame,
nor does the light of day disguise

the pallor of our present lives,
so sedentary and so tame.
Up comes the sun, the moon survives

unconfident, yet still contrives
to glimmer shyly by the the flame,
nor does the light of day disguise

our resignation nor our sighs.
We loved and have no one to blame.
Up comes the sun, the moon survives,
the light of day with no disguise.




[This message has been edited by Janet Kenny (edited November 18, 2006).]

Hi, Anna (we seem to have "met" in a couple of recent pubs).

Those stats are very interesting, thank you.

So out of 43 submissions of repeating-form poems, you chose 2, which makes them a rather risky venture, I'd say.

Please pop in and let us know the minute the "F U Triolet" is published - I can't wait to see it.


Holy snappin frog-poop, Janet!

For an extempore villanelle, that is rather amazing.

Like Quincy, I tend to abominate all repeaters, but when they do come off, they do very well.



[This message has been edited by Mark Allinson (edited November 19, 2006).]

Crap Quatrain

First we'll go for the villanelle,
Then jettison the triolet,
And then we'll hear the sonnet's knell,
And all crap forms will go away.

VAPID VILLANELLE

Here's the first line. It will be recast
and used again before this poem is through.
And here's the line I'll end upon at last.

The challenge of a villanelle is vast.
I started poorly, reader, telling you
Here's the first line. It will be recast,

and even though I knew it was half-assed
I kept on writing, knowing it was true.
And then I wrote the line that would come last.

By now, dear reader, you are shocked, aghast,
and wondering if you have grounds to sue.
Here's the twelfth line. Like the first, recast,

its vapid senselessness is unsurpassed.
It's like a food you cannot taste or chew,
as is the line that's destined to come last.

We can only hope that it comes fast.
We all have better things by far to do.
Here's the first line, thoroughly recast.
And here's the line I'll end upon at last.

Thanks for that one, Bob. For ages now (since I first saw it on QED, when I was a lady) I have always thought it was the best villanelle parody around.

[This message has been edited by Mark Allinson (edited November 19, 2006).]

Ed Conti's Sestina

This takes the cake for a sestina parody.
Janet