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?