The title is deliberately provocative, but it is nonetheless true that there are some forms where the threshold of kick-assery has to be pretty high to get over my baseline loathing. The triolet is one of these, but the one that really sticks in my craw is the villanelle.

There have been good villanelles written. Mostly in Provencal, I suspect, though there is "Do Not Go Gently Into This Good Night"--hey, one villanelle I can think of that didn't bug the hell out of me in the last 100 years!

Why my loathing for this form that appears all over the goddamn place in various formalista journals? Well, the sound, to begin with. The repeated lines seem to almost compel poets to clomp their way through ten syllables and five stresses before coming to a rest on the clang of the rhyme.

Second, the content. The formal demands of the villanelle tend to lead one to decide a villanelle is successful if its language remains more or less colloquial and it follows a roughly logical progression. Competency becomes excellence.

And so much repetition over so short a space is usually too damn much. "Oh fuck, here comes that line about the poet's father again"--without, in the overwhelming majority of cases, enough in between the repetends to give the line a new twist.

So all you villanelle writers out there--PLEASE STOP!!!

Quincy

http://www.alsopreview.com/thepoets/espaillat/Song.html

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15212

[This message has been edited by Gregory Dowling (edited November 18, 2006).]

The Quincy

Our Quincy doesn’t love the villanelle.
He thinks it tends towards repetitive crap,
that villanellists all should go to Hell.

But, Quincy, can one not be made to gel
like sounds of shoreline wavelets as they lap?
It’s chancy, but the lovelorn villanelle

is not a kernel—it is just a shell;
it’s not a destination, just a map
where villanellists follow roads to Hell.

But maybe it is really just as well
that someone’s there endeavoring to zap
the “Quincy”—the substandard villanelle—

for in a poet’s brain a single cell
can grow so many Quincies you might snap!
Yes, villanellists all should go to Hell.

But, Quincy, though you have an urge to quell
your namesake, please show tolerance, dear chap,
lest villanellists call to you in Hell:
We Quincy-writers love the villanelle!

Two exceptions to a general rule--Rhina's in particular works by using the repetends in different places syntactically. But I've seen way better non-villanelles out of both.

Quincy

Ummm... John... sure, dude.

Quincy

Editing in--Everyone knows that a "Quincy" is, in fact when you stub your toe, yell, "Oh fuck me, that fucking hurt! Doctor, doctor...!" before remembering you're at a wedding.

[This message has been edited by Quincy Lehr (edited November 18, 2006).]

All good poems are exceptions to the general rule. The answer isn't for us lesser talents to stop writing - after all, flukes do happen - it's for editors to stop publishing unexceptional work. I agree that villanelles are almost impossible to do well, and when they're not exceptionally good, they're bad.

Rhina's villanelle is one of my favorite poems of hers, regardless of form.

[This message has been edited by Rose Kelleher (edited November 18, 2006).]

A triolet that works (There are lots more.):

To a Fat Lady Seen From the Train

O why do you walk through the fields in gloves,
Missing so much and so much?
O fat white woman whom nobody loves,
Why do you walk through the fields in gloves,
When the grass is soft as the breast of doves
And shivering sweet to the touch?
O why do you walk through the fields in gloves,
Missing so much and so much?

-- Frances Cornford

Rose--

We're in basic agreement, I think.

Quincy

David,
I think I prefer G. K. Chesterton’s answering poem, “The Fat White Woman Speaks”. (I realise it’s not in the same form so this is not strictly pertinent to the thread but I can’t resist putting it in anyway.)

Why do you rush through the field in trains,
Guessing so much and so much.
Why do you flash through the flowery meads,
Fat-head poet that nobody reads;
And why do you know such a frightful lot
About people in gloves as such?

And how the devil can you be sure,
Guessing so much and so much,
How do you know but what someone who loves
Always to see me in nice white gloves
At the end of the field you are rushing by,
Is waiting for his Old Dutch?

I think if any example apart from D Thomas should alter your opinion it's Derek Mahon's 'Antarctica'. As perfect as possible.

And let's not forget Elizabeth Bishop, Sylvia Plath, Theodore Roethke
and WH Auden: http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/677.html

Of course it's a damnably difficult form, like the sestina, and of course most poets can't (or won't attempt to) write a memorable example. That doesn't mean it's silly or defunct though.

I wrote this for the other thread then decided it should be here but it's an interruption, I see that:

I think good villanelles are the hardest thing of all to write and I think, ideally, they could be most successful when the repetends stay the same and the poem moves around them.

This moves a little:
The Waking

The reason Dylan Thomas's villanelle is parodied so much is because it has sunk into all of our minds. And let's not start that argument again.
Janet

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

I've posted this before (I believe it was the first poem I ever posted on the Sphere), but thanks, Quincy, for giving me a half an excuse to put it up again.

Do Not Go Gentle into that Quenelle

I wish I could create a villanelle
With poet’s flourish, and a sous-chef’s care,
As sweet and subtle as a plump quenelle.

....A proper, formal Miss, of classic phrase,
....Her soft, hypnotic voice can weave a spell
....That leaves this anxious suitor in a daze:
....She is my siren of the villanelle.

I must find piquant lines that mingle well
(The recipe demands a perfect pair)
With which I could create that villanelle

As easily as I take shrimp and shell
Them, grind them, beat in egg whites full of air
And sweetly, subtly, raise a plump quenelle.

....Those retold lines and oft-repeated rhymes,
....Old-fashionedly romantic Gallic pace,
....The ease with which she makes each point four times,
....Accent her elegance, her form, her grace.

But overlabored tercets will not swell
My dish - If I could blend their essence with the flair
I wish, I would create a villanelle

That marries words and verbs in parallel
With nutmeg, cayenne, heavy cream; prepare
It sweet and subtle; as a plump quenelle,

....And if she seems to stutter, just as well -
....No twists or turns or sonnets’ clever ways
....Disturb the quiet, mesmerizing swell
....Of every echolalic, encored phrase,

French-kissed with fruits de mer and bechamel,
A mix to metaphorically declare:
I wish I could create a villanelle
As sweet and subtle as a plump quenelle.

....As I begin to see that I adore
....A nagging and reiterative bore.

Gregory,
I dislike--have always disliked-- GKC's riposte because I think it lazy, or ignorant (and patronising because it states the bleeding obvious).
Why didn't he write it as a triolet?
Best,
David

David,

I think Chesterton's point is fair enough: how the hell can a poet who glimpses someone from a train know she's a woman "whom nobody loves"? There's a definite cultural arrogance there: I'm a poet and I know the right way to walk through a field - and I can prove my superior sensitivity by writing a triolet about it.

True, Chesterton might have made his satirical point more effectively if he'd used the triolet himself by way of riposte, but tightness and concision were never his strong points.

Gregory

Mark (et al.),

No, there is nothing inherently wrong with the villanelle, any more than there is with any other form. I'm sure there's a great double sestina out there, too. But the problem with the villanelle right now is its overuse. Mahon, Auden, Bishop, etc. wrote villanelles, sure, but not very often (nary a one in Mahon's last several books, certainly).

It isn't so much even a question of poetic chops... it's one of the material organically fitting the form. There are probably too many sonnets, too, but the latter is a far more versatile form.

Quincy

Yes, as I said, Gregory, he states the bleeding obvious.
(But I think Cornford was using the fat white woman to personify her own failings as she saw them; not really patronising at all.)
Quincy, there are tiny numbers of villanelles written compared with the number of sonnets.
Best,
David

The Fat White Lady Has a Few Nits

I wish you would vary your dull repetends
when you treat life as trite triolet -
especially when the poem offends.
I wish you would play with your dull repetends,
and try to remember when verse condescends
it helps to have something intriguing to say.
I wish you would vary your dull repetends
when you treat life as trite triolet, bitch!


[This message has been edited by Michael Cantor (edited November 18, 2006).]

David--

You're no doubt right, and rightfully so--in part because there are so many types of sonnets--blank, Shakespearean, Petrarchian, Mediterranean, tetrameter, nonce, etc. that the expressive possibilities are far more varied.

Look, the villanelle can, in some specific instances, produce powerful poems, but too often (and more often proportionately to the total number I read compared to other forms), they read like "chops pieces," written as an exercise--whether they were or not.

I tend not to like sestinas, either (including Auden's), but Cantor's "Tall Woman"--a sestina--pwned to no end.

Quincy

Well, David,

You've intrigued me. I confess I'd never thought of there being any possible irony in Cornford's poem - and come to think of it I can't even remember whether I read Chesterton's squib first or not. I'll also confess it is the only poem of Cornford I've ever read - but then it does seem to be the only one around.

Anyway, while I'm at it, I might as well paste in Housman's bash at it as well - again not a triolet, but a curiosity in any case:

O why do you walk through the fields in boots,
Missing so much and so much?
O fat white woman whom nobody shoots,
Why do you walk through the fields in boots,
When the grass is soft as the breast of coots
And shivering-sweet to the touch?

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

This note is for Golias (Golias, do you have another name? Are you telling people what it is?)-- to thank him/her for that hilarious take on all the forms we putter with, or avoid puttering with, or discover in the putterings of others. Nice work! Made me laugh.

Marilyn

Marilyn,
Golias is a Wiley customer much loved by those of us who have known his work for some years, and that includes his publishing work which was always of a very high order and generously adventurous. Clemency was his nature and Clement were his ways.

As much as I dare say.
Janet

And well said too Janet of the publisher of the finest Ezine of all.

The Rue of Mrs Pimpernel

Oh why am I such a scarlet hue,
what if the neighbors guess?
It's fine for Lehr and his derring-do,
but I couldn't cope if my mother knew
aware that we are the only two
with him the one wearing a dress.
Oh why am I such a scarlet? Hugh-
what if the neighbors guess?

Heh! The last time a young man told me he'd met me in a couple of pubs recently, it was London, circa 1990, and he meant the Seven Stars and the Goat in Boots...

You can interpret statistics to say many things. Personally, I'd say mine meant your best odds of being accepted were to submit a triolet. I've had one in three out of the last four issues (and I nominated Kate's for a Pushcart.)

I certainly get to the stage with each issue of rejecting sonnets (unless they are BRILLIANT) because I think I have enough sonnets. I've rarely rejected a repeating form simply because I was overstocked with them. (Although, one reason there are no sestinas in the upcoming issue is that the last issue was the sestina special, and had three, plus a double s.)

I think that villanelles are just hard to pull off, and I'm picky.

Anna

Anna--

Your statistics are interesting, and raise a point for me. There is a certain American neo-formalist magazine that seems very fond of villanelles and sonnets. I once went through a contributor's copy and counted the villanelles and sonnets--and discovered the issue in question was heavily (over 1/3) composed of the two forms. It wears down the reader after a while, especially the villanelles. (The publication in question is Iambs and Trochees.) I get sonnet fatigue from Measure, what with the Nemerov finalists, but that's less intense.

It's just that I really do like to read publications, and I do have to think that some more attention to not getting too many goddamn fixed forms into single issues could be paid by certain magazine editors. It sounds like you (Anna) have a fairly good balance and think about the balance of your e-zine.

(For the record, I've never been in an publication published in Evansville, IN, I got into Iambs and Trochees both times I submitted to them, so I'm quite sure this isn't pique speaking.)

Quincy

I dunno, I could read sonnets all day. I can sit down with a whole book of sonnets - the Oxford Book of Sonnets, or Mike Stocks's new book - and the form doesn't grate the way it would with a book of villanelles (or, for that matter, two villanelles in a row). If I find myself thinking, "Oh, no, not another sonnet," I don't blame the sonnet form itself - it's more a matter of how it's used. Certain traits are grating, not necessarily in one lone sonnet, but in one after another. Rigidly regular meter, for example, or heavily end-stopped lines, or a certain predictability in the shape of the argument: first quatrain, second quatrain, here comes the "But" at the beginning of Line 9, etc. Not saying those things are bad in themselves, just that they make the reading of consecutive sonnets feel more monotonous.

I may have a higher threshold than you do for sonnet-monotony, Quincy, but I read Stock's Folly all the way through in one sitting and never once got that, "Oh, no, not another sonnet" feeling. I do get that feeling when I read certain magazines, though, or spend much time at certain workshops. In Stock's sonnets, the content is like the host you came to the party to see, and the form is like, er, the caterer who quietly makes himself useful, bringing food and refilling drinks, but whose face you remember only vaguely the next day. But then, I like sonnets - people who don't will always notice the form and think it's a flaw.

Rose--

I haven't seen Stocks's book, but my pain threshold for sonnets is actually fairly high--when they're in a collection that has clearly been plotted out--which is a bit different than the experience one has reading a magazine. (Just read Waterman's "Out for the Elements"--zero form variation in 180-odd stanzas, but it works because it's a coherent whole.)

Quincy

Dammit Quincy, now you have ME attempting these things! I've made rather free with the half rhymes. Here it is anyway.


SEANCE

Tinkering in the dark, Houdini,
they try your death’s door. Is it shut?
Shoelaces could come in handy
(tinkerings in the dark, Houdini)
or a small, regurgitated key.
Then someone punched you in the gut.
Still tinkering at the dark. Houdini,
your final death’s door, is it? Shut!

"I think Chesterton's point is fair enough: how the hell can a poet who glimpses someone from a train know she's a woman "whom nobody loves"? There's a definite cultural arrogance there: I'm a poet and I know the right way to walk through a field - and I can prove my superior sensitivity by writing a triolet about it."
—Gregory

And it's not merely "cultural arrogance," Gregory—it's personal arrogance, in fact contempt. Cornford or the narrator assumes the woman is unloved, and why? Because she is wearing gloves and fat? How absurd! There are many reasons to be wearing gloves in a field, just as there are many reasons to wear boots in a field--not everyone is insensitive to nettles, thorns and allergies.

As I recall, the fields is England have lots of stickers of some kind. Nettles? I've forgotten what they were. In any case, both the Housman and the Chesterton are favorites.

David, you said "using the fat white woman to personify her own failings as she saw them."

1. She could only guess at the woman's "failings as she saw them." I agree with Gregory that the point of view is smugly condescending & all the more so because it's totally a shot in the dark from a whizzing train.

2. The phrase "personify her own failings as she saw them": what on earth does that mean, David? Can anyone personify their own failings as they see them? How is that done? Perhaps that is, after all, what John Lennon meant by posing for the camera sloshed with a kotex on his head. Or what Mark Chapman meant by shooting Lennon?

Terese

PS. I agree the great majority of villanelles and triolets come off as mere exercises. I'd like to see more inventiveness in form.

PS 2: I've edited to change "He" to "She." Leaving "2" as is because it's an interesting question.







[This message has been edited by Terese Coe (edited November 19, 2006).]

This has been a great thread. In particular, I'd like to thank Gene Auprey for the link he provided above. If anybody missed it, here it is again:

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

It's not only a very good villanelle but there's a fascinating thread after it, in particular a very detailed commentary by Rhina Espaillat, probably the best living writer of villanelles. (And what do we have to do to get the marble frame around our postings?)

So here's another one by Rhina (her very best one has already been posted above by Rose):

MINDING

'It should never be possible to read a poem and not mind it' - J. D. Scrimgeour

Nothing sings true by being merely kind.
There's music, yes, and dance; but something more
has to be heard, be hard, to hurt the mind.

A line may smile to draw you, keep you wined
and fed with sweets like some inviting whore,
but there's a price it charges to be kind.

Pleasure comes barbed and bladed, hooked and spined:
across the palm, a sudden thread of gore
tells you there's more to learn; you learn to mind.

A poem works through what it leaves behind:
a scar that alters what you were before,
a muting of the light you thought was kind.

You know the country - how the rivers wind,
how the wind blows and where the soil is poor -
but never trust it qute: these fields are mined.

I've come, myself, hoping to be made blind,
made comfortable, by words, and limped home sore.
Nothing that sings the truth is less than kind.
Words need to hurt because you need to mind.

-----

Thanks too to Golias for posting that poem by Frances Cornford. I still have lingering doubts about the level of irony in "Fat White Woman" but I'm willing to be convinced.


[This message has been edited by Gregory Dowling (edited December 30, 2007).]