[David Rosenthal]

Thanks again to Susan for hosting this and to Bruce for generous and insightful comments in all the threads. I am not a very good reader of these forms, and I have learned a bit from these poems and from the comments by Bruce and everyone else.

I was surprised to make the cut. This was the first villanelle I ever wrote, and the only one that I think is successful. I have tried no other repeating forms. I wrote this nearly 14 years ago for my wife on her 30th birthday, and it appeared in Blue Unicorn in 1999 or so under the title "At Thirty." I wrote two others around that time -- one also appeared in BU, but while I like it for sentimental reasons, I don't think it good enough to have in my manuscript now; and the other is mostly garbage with a couple of lines I hope to salvage one day. I wrote a fourth several years later and brought it to the Deep End where I whittled it down to an eight line poem with no trace for the original repetends. So ended my repeating forms output.

Thanks to everyone for the many useful comments. I have already revised the thing. I had changed the title to get something more universal since the poem seemed to hold up just as well at forty as at thirty. But the discussion here has persuaded me to return to the original title -- it is an "ocassional" poem and I think that adds to it more than it detracts from it. I am also taking Frank's minor tweaks to S2.

"Shedding off" is the sort of mistake I am liable to make with my approach to meter, but a particular mistake I think I wouldn't make now, all these years later. Also the middle line of that stanza has always bothered me. So I have rewritten the stanza. I hope the rewrite helps make the final stanza more palatable as well.

I can't change the final stanza. This was a rare instance of one reader being more important than any others. As a beautiful woman turning thirty, two months into her second pregnancy, my wife understood "integers" not only as years but as inches and pounds. The final stanza is what made the poem for her then and now. I don't know what to say to people who had trouble with "your legs from toe to toe." Seems pretty clear to me.

So, for those who are interested, here is the revised poem:

AT THIRTY

The integers appear and disappear
and take their fractions with them when they go,
but you are more yourself each passing year.

As water makes a jagged rock a sphere
through unrelenting bouts of ebb and flow,
the integers appear and disappear.

The numbers used to be a source of fear,
distracting you from what you've come to know,
that you are more yourself each passing year.

So much that seemed too far, now seems too near;
so much that seems too fast, once seemed too slow;
the integers appear and disappear.

The sums and differences can seem severe
at times, but you’ll outlast them as you grow,
becoming more yourself each passing year.

Your hands, your arms, your face from ear to ear,
your hips, your breasts, your legs from toe to toe --
the integers appear and disappear,
and you are more yourself each passing year.




Thanks again you brilliant Sphereans.

Best,

David R.