Hi Jan,
I'm going to go out on a limb here and respectfully present a differing opinion from the seeming majority on here about your original refrains. To my ear, they did not vary too much to disrupt the echo the repetition creates. In fact, I found them to be more interesting than the strict repetition you've revised to, though I do appreciate the other edits that you've made.
I would encourage you to feel free to play with the strictness or looseness of the refrains. It can make a really powerful poem to have a fairly strict refrain that plays with the lines around it. It can also make a really interesting and playful poem to mess around with variation to a higher degree, even if sacrificing a bit of the echo. I would argue it depends on the individual poem and poet as to how much echo you want to hear in your villanelle. And critics are more than welcome to call it a loose villanelle or a wannabe villanelle. If an interesting poem is produced from it, I say so be it.
I know many will not agree with me, and that's okay, but I just thought it might be helpful to hear a different opinion, if only for future reference.
Take care,
Chelsea
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