Rhina, you're so much fun. I've been enjoying this thread, and others immensely. Thanks for your comments to my ovejillo, (sp?)and for the energy you bring here. Of course you're right about those out of place tet lines.

Speaking of delights, was thrilled to see a poem of Robert Mezey's in the latest National Review this morning. Nice swingin, if you're listening in, Robert.

wendy

Three spectacular ovillejos, but I'm with Rhina. Roberts's villanelle is better than Mister Justice's, more austere, more direct, despite Robert's deference to Donald Justice as "il migliore fabbro." Then when you consider how exponentially more difficult the vill is in trimeter rather than pentameter... Nonetheless I want to call all our villains' attention to a newly published one, from Anthony Hecht's extraordinary new book "The Darkness and the Light:"

Nocturne: A Recurring Dream

The moon is a pearl in mist and sets the scene.
Comfort seems within reach, just over there,
But rocks, water, and darkness intervene.

Incalculable dangers lie between
Us and the warmth of bedding, the life’s flare.
The moon is a pearl of mist and sets the scene;

She’s not, as claimed by Ben Jonson, heaven’s queen.
More ghostly, an omen of death hung in the air.
Rocks, water and darkness intervene

Between that shadowy dwelling, barely seen,
And something not at all unlike despair.
The moon is a pearl of mist and sets the scene

For—secret rites? Ensorcellment? Marine
Catastrophe? Before we can declare,
Rocks, water, and darkness intervene.

Oystery pale, anything but serene,
Our goal seems cloaked in the forbidding glare
Of moonlight as a pearl that sets the scene
Where rocks, water, and darkness intervene.

Some great villanelles! It is probably more than a little brassy to quote Donald Justice to Robert Mezey, but I'll risk it for the sake of squeezing in here with a villanelle I like even more than the Robert Vaughn:

Villanelle at Sundown

Turn your head. Look. The light is turning yellow.
The river seems enriched thereby, not to say deepened.
Why this is, I'll never be able to tell you.

Or are Americans half in love with failure?
One used to say so, reading Fitzgerald, as it happened.
(That Viking Portable, all water-spotted and yellow--

Remember?) Or does mere distance lend a value
To things?--false, it may be, but the view is hardly cheapened.
Why this is, I'll never be able to tell you.

The smoke, those tiny cars, the whole urban milieu--
One can like anything diminishment has sharpened.
Our painter friend, Lang, might show the whole thing yellow

And not be much off. It's nuance that counts, not color--
As in some late James novel, saved up for the long weekend,
And vivid with all the Master simply won't tell you.

How frail our generation has got, how sallow
And pinched with just surviving! We all go off the deep end
Finally, gold beaten thinly out to yellow.
And why this is, I'll never be able to tell you.

Some people might think the poem is a little too free with the form, but it feels like a villanelle to me. I especially like the switch in perspective at the end, where the observer becomes the observed, is finally what is yellow.

Well, thanks for the kind words about my little
villanelle (though I continue to think Justice's
is better, in fact, both of his). No, not at all
brassy, Anthony---I was happy to see that other
villanelle again: it's a beauty---"and why that is
I'll never be able to tell you." By the way, my
villanelle, whatever its worth, is a good example
of how content can be an extension of form, as well
as the other way round. I had nothing particular in
mind that I wanted to say, I just wanted to see if
I could write a decent villanelle in trimeter. (I
forgot to mention another of those very few great
villanelles, Robinson's The House on the Hill,
also in trimeter, the model I had in mind.) In case
some of you don't know it, here it is.

They are all gone away,
BANNED POSTBANNED POSTThe House is shut and still,
There is nothing more to say.

Through broken walls and gray
BANNED POSTBANNED POSTThe winds blow bleak and shrill:
They are all gone away.

Nor is there one today
BANNED POSTBANNED POSTTo speak them good or ill:
There is nothing more to say.

Why is it then we stray
BANNED POSTBANNED POSTAround the sunken sill?
They are all gone away,

And our poor fancy-play
BANNED POSTBANNED POSTFor them is wasted skill:
There is nothing more to say.

There is ruin and decay
BANNED POSTBANNED POSTIn the House on the Hill:
They are all gone away,
There is nothing more to say.


It always brings tears to my eyes. It's closer
to flawless than any, perhaps.
Well, enough.



[This message has been edited by robert mezey (edited September 02, 2001).]

Well here is my first attempt at an ovillejo. Thanks for introducing it Rhina. I have thoroughly enjoyed reading everyone's contributions. It is a fun form.


Astrology (Or, The Dark Side of the Moon)

“My Libra is in Mars.”
The stars,
he states, possess mystique.
Don’t speak,
I think; what's to discuss?
To us,
Astrology’s no plus.
He says, “Aha! Oh yes!”
I say, “It’s just a guess.”
The stars don’t speak to us.




[This message has been edited by nyctom (edited September 02, 2001).]

Rhina, thank you for your kind comments on my little effort. The form is quite more difficult than at first appears. In the same vein of experimentation, and not wishing comparison with the eminences who have preceeded me in this forum with their villanelles, herewith my attempt;


At the Lame Pedlar’s Burial

We mumble prayers;
not over-much.
He’s gone—who cares?

Distainful stares—
he knew of such.
We mumble prayers.

In tattered layers
we wouldn’t touch
he’s gone. Who cares.

He clanged his wares,
said he was Dutch.
We mumble prayers.

Had he affairs—
somehow, a crutch?
He’s gone—who cares?

But no one dares
to mock death’s clutch.
He’s gone. Who cares
we mumble prayers?

Jim



[This message has been edited by Jim Hayes (edited September 04, 2001).]

Wow, a dimeter villanelle! You're brave and
reckless, Jim. And you've done pretty well
with what may an impossible form. The special
difficulty of dimeters in this form is that
the refrains come so fast one after the other.
But maybe not even Hardy himself could pull it
off.

As a newcomer to this site, I found this thread to be *extremely* helpful. It's so nice to be here, double-dares and all!

I've always taken the flaws in "One Art" to be deliberate, essential elements of the poem that actually strengthen it, rather than mere imperfections. I read them as a commentary on the multilayered disaster of the poem, turning the perfection of the villanelle form into a sort of disaster itself -- but a disaster that works, IMO, as best it can in an artistic world that (even back in Bishop's time, as we know) was threatening to lose touch with a living, breathing formal element in poetry. (If only Bishop could have had the Internet; I can't help but feel she would have been comforted by the presence of such a site as this, to see such energetic and innovative examples of contemporary formal poetry!)

Yes, it's famous, but for those who might not know the poem, I copy it in here:

One Art

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 somthing 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.

-- Elizabeth Bishop

Of course all this leads to the larger question: how much can a poet vary/stretch/distort a form before those variations become flaws? Does it simply vary from poem to poem, reader to reader? Or not? Perhaps this isn't the place to pose such questions; perhaps they've already been dealt with earlier and as a newbie I've missed it (I certainly sense it as an undercurrent in many of the posts I've read so far). Sorry if that's the case. But it did seem quite connected to the "beginner asks about form" topic. Thoughts?

Lilith

[This message has been edited by Lilith (edited September 09, 2001).]

Hello all, thank you for posting such wonderful examples of villanelles. Mr.Mezey, yours is my favorite.

It seems to me (for the moment) impossible to make my villanelle succeed without going into a long block, so, I will let it rest. Something will come to me in time that will make it better.

Nadia.

OK. I'm only posting this because of the dare.


My faith is but a lie.
Am I
repenting all the while?
A child
adoring a façade
of God?
I search the town, the esplanade,
the woods; I look incessantly
but I find more uncertainty.
Am I a child of God?

Nadia