i was wondering, why do people keep trying to write
the villainous villanelle? i don't know of a
poetic form with a lower success rate--even the halfway
decent ones can be counted on the fingers of one hand.

[This message has been edited by graywyvern (edited January 09, 2002).]

Not ever having written a passable villanelle, I'm not sure I'm the person to answer this. But I think people keep trying in part because, if successful, they'll create a helluva poem. Think of the marvelous villanelles by Robinson, Kees, Thomas, Auden, Bishop and Roethke, and you'll see that it's worth making an attempt.

The problem, of course, is that it's hard to write a poem in English of 19 lines that uses only two rhymes, it's hard to make that poem build or change from stanza to stanza and come to a sense of culmination, and it's hard to write one line worth repeating, let alone two. So yes, most villanelles, even most published villanelles, are quite bad.

I also suspect that, like the sestina, the villanelle has become one of those forms that creative writing teachers assign because they think their kids can do it--hey, once you've got the refrains, look how few lines you've got left to write! But it won't work without emphatic meter, which takes much training these days, and it won't work without an intelligent appraisal of the strengths and limitations of the form itself.

Hello again, David -- After recently posting my first villanelle and getting help from some great critiquers, I dared to imagine I actually had something worth sharing. Now wondering if that was a judgment based on ignorance on my part! You mention that a villanelle

" . . . won't work without emphatic meter, which takes much training these days, and it won't work without an intelligent appraisal of the strengths and limitations of the form itself."

I don't know that my meter was particularly "emphatic" and in fact I'm not sure what that means. Isn't a subtle use of meter more desirable, for it to exist as a background aspect where it's less noticeable, maybe with variations, rather than being overly regular?

Also, did you have further thoughts that you might share on the "strengths and limitations of the form" one ought to intelligently appraise to write better villanelles in future? Thank you,
Susan Vaughan

P.S. Just belatedly wanted to add at least a personal response to graywyvern's query about why people keep writing villanelles when they're practically doomed from the start.

At least in my case: 1) I found it a great delight to just get to endlessly mess around with a single repetend that felt almost magically physical in its effect to me (the vertical take-offs and gaping at the rise, with the hummingbirds and jets, if anyone recalls, or cares!)

2) Also, I got great satisfaction in FINALLY finding -- after failing and failing and failing for miserable days -- those seemingly impossible rhymes for "Harrier" and making them, I hoped, seem easy!

So, graywyvern, I would guess it's those kinds of enjoyment -- masochistic though they may often be! -- that keeps the villanelle in business.

P.S. again. Lastly I must add that after reading Clive's hilarious poem currently on the metrical board about "barkeep, show my sozzled carcass the door, will ya" (sorry Clive, it was much better of course) -- which I can't think of the form's name but it goes ABA, BCB, CDC, DED, etc., I think -- now I've absolutely got to try one of those!

Any recommendations on that form, David, besides to definitely choose easier rhymes than "Harrier"?!


[This message has been edited by Susan Vaughan (edited January 07, 2002).]

I haven't looked at Susan's villanelle yet, though I will, when I get out from under some paper here. By emphatic meter, I didn't mean regular meter, I meant strong meter. Some villanelles have worked with fascinating but selective variations in their refrains, some have used enjambments skillfully, some have made good use of metrical substitutions, but it seems to me that the ones that work all announce the form boldly and don't try too hard to hide it. Some very great sonnets might well hide the fact that they're sonnets to all but the most trained ear, but I think the villanelle is a form in which one can cross a line and create so many variations that the form itself breaks down--I see this in some student villanelles, anyway.

To demonstrate my point about each form having strengths and limitations, consider the sestina for a moment: it's overused, but I still feel delight when I run across a good one. What happens to most students is this: they think, Ah, an easy form, no absolute demand in terms of meter and no rhyme, all I gotta do is repeat these six words and it's only 39 lines long. Well, it turns out that 39 lines is a long time to sustain a lyric, and I can depend on seeing most student sestinas bog down in about the fourth stanza. They get wordy and they don't do anything new. One of my brighter students just turned in a very good one that was saved because she began the fourth stanza with the word "But" and made a sort of turn in the poem--she saw the problem of sustaining her course any further in one direction, and she changed tack.

In the villanelle, since you're repeating the two lines, there's a huge danger that you'll just say the same things over and over again. That's why the best of them change the magnitude of their subject along the way, or increase the emotional or intellectual stakes in some way. The form has a built-in weakness that you have to overcome. That's part of mastering it. Again, I say this as one who has never mastered it, never written a good villanelle--or sestina, for that matter....

One thing I hear asked often is whether or not a poem is sonnet material (or villanelle, or whatever). What exactly makes a poem lean towards a certain form? How does the subject influence the form the poem takes?

jason

That's a good question, and I'd love to hear David's take on it. When I feel a poem coming on, the initial impulse seems to bring its form with it, as if it "knew" why it had to be a sonnet or a villanelle or what have you. Is that a common feeling, and is it accurate, or simply an illusion based on having read a great many sonnets and villanelles that do this or that, which is something like what you want to do in this new poem?

Well, I think one reason we "practice" writing in fixed forms is so that we'll have them around when we really need them. Any good musician knows that having a lot of tunes at one's command is a good thing, and I think poets ought to practice their scales just like musicians and learn a lot of tunes. It's not that one necessarily will write a good villanelle or a good sonnet, but that one ought to be equipped to go that way if the opportunity arises. Like Rhina, I suspect, I work in the dark for some portion of a poem's composition, not knowing necessarily where I'll find its form. But having some forms at my command gives me a range of choices, and I can start to see in a poem some legitimate directions it might take.

I once wrote a poem in four six-line stanzas, the first three unrhymed, the final one rhymed. It occured to me that I had a damned good sestet for a sonnet there, if I could only boil the previous 18 lines down to 8 for an octave. Well, I haven't yet succeeded in doing that, and the poem has its present life in its original form. But I don't exclude the possibility that it might someday become a sonnet.

Richard Wilbur says somewhere that if you feel like saying something in about eight lines and then responding to it in a slightly shorter space, you might just be on the way to a sonnet. That's pretty much the way I feel about it. Writing in a given form is not in itself a virtuous activity, from my point of view, but writing a really good poem that has found its form, whatever that form might be, is the real thing to do.

David, I agree completely about the value and importance of practicing forms. In fact, on occasion I've annoyed stu-dents expecting that a creative writing class will be a good place to Express Deep Thoughts by telling that I'm not after Deep Thoughts, but skill. It's hard, at first, getting them to let go and play without feeling duty-bound to say something serious and "valuable"! After a while, of course, they do, and then they're hooked. And then they have the forms, as you say, just in case "valuable" comes along some day. What takes time to learn is throwing away the exercises afterward--except for those very few that actually seem to become poems.

Rhina,
The Greeks have a lovely word for agreement: symphony.

Dave

My example counts for a lot less than the ones we've heard, but I sometimes start out knowing the form I want to try and then try to use that decision as I begin to write. For example, if I "know" I want to write a sonnet, I'll avoid taking too long to get to the "point," figuring I have to wrap up the first part of the poem in 8 lines. If I have something longer in mind, I might spend 6 or 8 lines setting a scene or laying groundwork. My recent terzanelle was a self-conscious decision to try the form ,and I tried as I wrote the first lines to bear in mind that I'd have to find some way to bring the lines back, possibly somewhat altered, in the end.

Other times, maybe most of the times, the decision comes after a few lines are written. If the first few lines come out iambic pentameter, I find myself wondering if I could stand to hear that third line a few more times, or whether the rhyme I've used at this point can be sustained a few more times...and if the answer is yes, I might tip toward a villanelle. If I write six unrhyming lines, I might glimpse the end-words and wonder whether I should be foolish enough to turn it into a sestina. Etc.

But whether you commit before the first line is written, or a few lines later, I think you generally need to commit at some point and then make decisions that will allow you to fulfill the form you've settled on.

I can't see that your example counts for any less. It makes good sense to me. We're all after poems, not just fill-in-the-blanks examples of a given form, and I'm not sure it matters a damn how we get there.

Dave

There are many fine examples (Thomas' 'Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night' is my favourite) but I find that the form lends itself especially well to humorous verse. It's something about the rhythm of those refrains and the limitation of two rhymes. The rondeau redouble offers similar challenges but is even more fiendish. The feeling of achievement you get from actually finishing a poem in any of these super-restrictive forms (even a terrible one) is quite something, though. I'd recommend it just for that.

Why bother with them? Fun, in short.

Good sestinas you could count on the fingers of no hands. Couldn't you?

Rob,

Try this sestina: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poet...ne/poem/245872

That made me laugh out loud, Gregory.

...and... it's a new record. A 13 year dredge! Wow. That's impressive.

We must have had at least a dozen similar discussions over the past thirteen years, and about 1500 villanelles (many of them by me, some funny, some intentionally funny), but there appears to be one unbreakable rule - you must mention Dylan Thomas. I think I'll wait a year or so, until it's ripe again, and try to discuss villanelles without mentioning Thomas - betcha it comes up within three replies. But it was good to see Alicia's sestina, rather than Yolek (whoops!)

I trust you will forgive me, Michael, it is the first time I have contributed to any such discussion.

I forgive you, but my comments were intended as a joke, so I also forgive you for not understanding my clumsy humor. That said, what led you to digging up that old a post? Were you checking out villanelles, tracking David Mason, or simply (my guess) working backwards through every Distinguished Guest thread ever? Since I have trouble keeping up with what was posted yesterday, the 13-year dredge is, in its way, awesome.

I wrote one once with the refrain line "The world does not need one more villanelle", and obviously graywyvern agrees with me.

(PS - I love wyverns. I even love just saying "Wyverns".)

Never mind. Not funny.

Thirteen or so years ago, Alicia called for villanelles and I posted one called Honest Iago's Villanelle. Nasty stuff, and it was lost in a computer crash. If anyone, by amazing chance, copied it or if it might still be hidden in the bowels of the sphere, let me know! I raked through all of Othello and it, in its horrible way, worked.

NEVER MIND. I FOUND IT IN THE BOWELS! CALLED HONEST IAGO'S V (2001)

http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/showth...s+Vi llanelle

Nice work, Ralph!

Some people, such as me, actually decide what form they want to try first and then find an idea to work with. But I also sometimes want to write something and it screams to me "I have to be a villanelle!" Probably the best one I ever wrote, "Labor day," was inspired by a villanelle I read in The Nation, because I rather liked it, but felt I could do one better. I still vividly remember the long period of time writing and revising it on paper, pages and pages, and when I finished I had this wonderful feeling that this is gonna work. Maybe a few tweaks but it captured the feeling and memories that I wanted to express. Only one line held me up for about six months. I think trial and error will tell, if in doubt, whether the idea fits the form. But I prefer to work in restrictive forms. Too much slack leaves me a little flat...

Thanks, Siham. I've only made public one other (a few weeks ago) and it richly deserved its demise! You're wise to let yours mature gracefully.

Nice to read that old thread, Ralph.

I've written sixteen villanelles (nine in Spanish, seven in English). Of these, at least four are disastrously bad, most are mediocre, and only one works very well. It's very likely that this one villanelle that worked will forever be my best poem. It's a pity that the muse had me write it in English instead of Spanish, though. In Spanish, it would have found an appreciative readership, but I'm a mediocre poet in English and this damages the chances of my one good villanelle. Oh well...

Pedro.

Why would the Spanish have found a more appreciative readership, Pedro? Do you mean because you write better in Spanish, or is there something about the Spanish audience for poetry that is more receptive?

I found a fun one on Mike's site. When I read it the first time, I did not even realize I was reading a villanelle. It is called "For Harry, Who Had Three Passports."

Yes, everyone mentions Thomas' villanelle, and in the same breath, Bishop's "One Art." I have to say I was fascinated the first time I read them. But that was 17 years ago.

Cheers,

Paddy

I didn't see this one mentioned. Granted, I haven't been around for so long ... I think I prefer it to Thomas's, FWIW. But not to Bishop's.


Mad Girl's Love Song

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan's men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you'd return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

On another board a group of us have been playing with a different form each month. In May it was ghazals, this month it's villanelles. Interesting the way some of the villanelles take on a ghazal quality, like having rather disconnected shers... er, stanzas.

As long as the thread has been dredged up, I might as well put in a plug for the Villanelles anthology edited by Annie Finch and Marie-Elizabeth Mali. In addition to containing every "famous" villanelle you can think of, it also has a lot of newer and previously unpublished examples from a variety of poets, including many Eratosphere members.

Thanks, Roger, for that link.

Esther, that’s an interesting point about the stanzas; I might take ‘disconnectedness’ as prima facie proof of a poet’s struggling with the form and the constraint of the repetends. A big reason why I adore Bishop’s poem is precisely the connectedness, the single theme coursing through the poem, and the way she works a crescendo climaxing in the last stanza. With wit. It is truly masterful.

Auden’s villanelle, in comparison, feels flat and almost platitudinous -- and I’m a big Auden fan. (I of course admit the fault may lie in me.)

This is from a comment Susan McLean made several years ago regarding an article by A.E. Stallings called "Rhyme Driven" --

"Though form does create certain expectations among readers (and form can subvert them, too), for writers, rhyme often drives them places they never expected to go when they started the poem, so the element of chance plays a very large part in the writing of rhymed poems. The minute you write a line that ends with a word you need to rhyme, you start thinking of any possible rhyme word that could pair with it. The unconscious often kicks in and makes a connection that the conscious mind would not have, sometimes even that one’s inner censors might not have let pass otherwise. I often wind up saying things that surprise me, particularly in intensely rhymed poems such as villanelles, in which one really has to stretch to find enough rhymes for the form."


P.S. And from A.E. Stallings, in a follow-up comment: "The rhymes are engine, not ornament."

Oh, we've all written decent, even good villanelles. Let's get over ourselves. Next question.

RM

What Rick said.

Rick, you are being way too modest. The one you wrote a while back, I believe (about Boris and Natasha) is great. I hope you publish it some day. I'll buy the book for that one poem.

I rather enjoyed Ed's link to Alicia's article.