The question I rarely see put to one of these villanelles that has been judged "successful"(and, ironically, I think it's the most important one) is, "Would it have been even better as a real poem?"

Is a good villanelle like the bumblebee of poetry - it flies despite its flawed design, but not as well as it could?

Thus spake the Neo-Formalist establishment, Marion. I never denied that a good villanelle could be written, any more than a good sestina. Nor would I say that no one should write them. I would say that there are too goddamn many of them, that the villanelles I see published have a far greater chance of sucking ass than most other types of metrical poems and tend to suck ass worse, that the form is, I suspect, frequently used by the technically proficient to just keep cranking the fuckers out, that the problem isn't that the form is hard per se but that it is of relatively narrow utility.

Quincy

Editing in--the pithy comment directed at Marion--which was not intended to offend--has been excised.

[This message has been edited by Quincy Lehr (edited November 20, 2006).]

[Edited out inflammatory parts, as promised]

[This message has been edited by Rose Kelleher (edited November 20, 2006).]

It's a shame that "De gustibus..." so often could be translated as, "Read it my way, or the highway..."

Wow. As a guitarist, I love this poem. Thanks for posting it. It's definitely going in my archives!

David (L)

Rose--

Perhaps. Sorry if I offended.

Quincy

I didn't see Quincy's deleted comment, but I never took his urging (in the first post in this thread) to be perfectly serious. And I do think it's an excellent idea for writers to reconsider whether villanelles and triolets actually need to be poems in those forms or not.

I will admit to often having been bored senseless by the staleness of exultation in longing by any poet. Speaking of lust and love in a poem is not as workable as many writers seem to think. More often than not it comes off puerile unless it's somehow very fresh and unusual.

Quincy has been a great boon to this board, and his so-called "vulgarity" makes me laugh more often than not. I don't believe in the existence of vulgar words any more than I believe human functions are vulgar. So we piss and shit, so what? I mean for heaven's sake, a bunch of you are in the Shit Creek Rvw and exult in it! If any wordsmiths can actually see a moral reason not to use certain words, I'd like to know what that is.

Quincy's insight can be both revealing and pithy at times: "The problem isn't that the form is hard per se but that it is of relatively narrow utility."

I certainly have never seen that stated before, and it's quite obviously true. In some ways writing a villanelle is too damn simple (that is, writing a mediocre one, as most are).

[My able counter-pwn of Rose is likewise excised]

All is well, folks!

Quincy

[This message has been edited by Quincy Lehr (edited November 20, 2006).]

[Edited out inflammatory parts, as promised]

[This message has been edited by Rose Kelleher (edited November 20, 2006).]

Let's confine our sniping to the crap forms, please, and refrain from the ad hom, overt or suggested. It would be a shame to have to lock an otherwise productive thread.

Alicia
Vice President of the Neo-Formalist Establishment