This is an exercise I've been wanting to do myself for some time. Maybe posting it will inspire me to actually execute it...

I don't think I've invented this. I think examples exist. I have a dim memory of running across one in Hollander's work, but unable to relocate it.

Perhaps the hardest part of a villanelle is coming up with great repetends. The rest is filling in the blanks (OK not easy). So...

Take a killer couplet from a famous (or not famous) poem, sonnet, etc. These are your repetends. Fill in the rest and... voila! Villanelle!

I'm too lazy to post the rules for the villanelle form here. Maybe someone could come along and do it... Or post a link to guidelines.

Serious and slight efforts welcome...

Alicia

VILLANELLE

A poem in a fixed form, consisting of five three-line stanzas followed by a quatrain and having only two rhymes. In the stanzas following the first, the first and third lines of the first stanza are repeated alternately as refrains. They are the final two lines of the concluding quatrain.

links with info:
http://www.ndsu.nodak.edu/instruct/c...FormPacket.htm
http://poetree.virtualave.net/workshop/villanelle.html
http://pages.prodigy.com/Firesheets/villanl.htm

And the example, though maybe Jim Hayes will put up one of his? Jim?

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light!

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light!

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light!

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse me, bless me, now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light!

--- Dylan Thomas


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~~Mary

Alicia if we EXCISE the FUN, where will we be? I think the banner's missing a letter or two?

Mary, good example of a great villanelle.

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Ralph

Alicia, let me get the rules straight for this exercise. I think what you're saying we're supposed to do is borrow the rhyming couplet from a known sonnet or other poem and use those two lines as the repetends for our own villannelle, is that it? Sounds like a good one, poets.

Carol

Alicia, I posted this many months ago, but it seems to meet your requirements--All but a few connecting words are Iago's, not mine. The sentiments are ALL his!


“Iago is the most honest character in Othello.”
(attributed to W. H. Auden)

Honest Iago’s Villanelle

Come on, come on; you are pictures out of doors,
Saints in injuries, devils when offended.
But then again, I think you are all whores.

It plucks out brains and all; but my muse labours
If you be fair and wise, fairness and witted.
And even so, you’re pictures out of doors.

Bells in your parlours, wild cats in kitchen chores
Or on your backs, your appetites are fed.
An honest man would call you honest whores.

You coyly hide from Venice rotten cores
And find a white that will your blackness wed,
So are proper as pictures out of doors.

Hussies you be to sell your sweetest stores,
Players in housewifery, and housewives* ill-bred.
An honest man must call you honest whores.

Filth, thou liest--all villainous paramours!
You rise to play and go to work in bed.
Come on, come on; you’re mere pictures out of doors.
But then again, I know you are all whores.

*hussies, whores



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Ralph

Mary, you're a dear! Thank you. Yes, the Thomas is the score to beat...

Carol, you understand the rules exactly.

Ralph, I see you already had one up your sleeve!

OK. I'm going to go work on mine now...

Hi: I'm new to this forum. I've been wanting to try a villanelle for quite a while now, so I've taken this opportunity to post one. I trust you will show me the error of my ways.


Faith

While golden threads were spun around his head
he whirled the glittering drips of moistened souls.
Not one of them acknowledged they were dead

All concerns he had for them were said
in flying fingers weaving out their roles
while golden threads were spun around his head.

His virtues swirled a vortex as it spread
among the eager throng. Beyond control,
not one of them acknowledged they were dead.

And yet they’d left their work for daily bread,
with homes and love and children warm with goals
while golden threads were spun around his head.

Fulfilled with promise, like a spool of thread
across a chop of icy barren floes
not one of them acknowledged they were dead

And they were sucked into the need to wed
a protector who reached beyond life’s shoals
while golden threads were spun around his head

If they believed whereto his promise led
their hearts could claim a space upon his scrolls
while golden threads were spun around his head.
Not one of them acknowledged they were dead.

What a marvelous idea.

Of course, I'm probably too wimpish to tackle it. I don't have the attention span to write a villanelle.

But I'll consider it.

Julie

But Julie, I've never noticed you to be particularly wimpish. Bedsides, now that I'm here you have somebody to be better than. Ha.

MS, this is well executed technically, but I can't quite grasp the central figure and metaphor: is it of Christ, a halo spinning 'round his head and the rest of humanity that's dead? In the overall development, I found the third-to-last stanza unclear.

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Ralph