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.
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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).]