[Susan McLean]

Here's a good one by Len Krisak, from Even As We Speak.


Rondeau

That things "fall through" should come as no surprise,
Though when they do, they open up our eyes
Too often. Love is sad--but seldom true--
For those who trust the likes of me . . . and you.
We build the best we can on lust and lies,

But that's not much to trust in. Love that dies
Because it cheats can't be the best of buys.
Admit, despite the best that you can do,
That things fall through

Because you've really done your penny-wise,
Pound-foolish worst, now haven't you? One tries
And tries to rationalize; it's still a slew
Of lies, my dear. And I'd prefer, in lieu
Of that--and you--the guts to recognize
That. Things fall through.

[Michael Juster]

Sorry, Roger, you're of course right. Also, it's interesting that "Rondeau" is really a rondel--a sign that the forms were not as fixed as they are today.

[Janet Kenny]

Michael,
I cant find that thread. I did several translations myself and don't seem to have kept them so if it's still there I'd like to see the thread.
Janet

[Janet Kenny]

(Henry, thanks for the Austin Dobson. I like that a lot.

Hope this isn't bad form. My own attempt.)


Rondeau to the Minister for Immigration

Many are speechless when they are betrayed.
Amnesty International badge displayed
on his lapel--a civilized disguise
for the contempt that flickers in his eyes.
Nobody leaves his office unafraid.

Blandly he bleats his mantra, tailor-made
by bureaucratic minions who are paid
to churn out empty legalistic lies.
Many are speechless.

He is the arbiter, the ambuscade,
hacking asylum seekers with his blade.
Clinical blandness smirks as mercy dies.
Icy politeness makes no compromise.
Faultless homunculus, each word is weighed.
Many are speechless.



[This message has been edited by Janet Kenny (edited January 21, 2005).]

[David Anthony]

Howard, old friend,
this one you posted is fine and moving, and was not known to me.
Best wishes,
David

"Death of a Vermont Farm Woman"
Barbara Howe

Is it time now to go away?
July is nearly over; hay
Fattens the barn, the herds are strong,
Our old fields prosper; these long
Green evenings will keep death at bay.

Last winter lingered; it was May
Before a flowering lilac spray
Barred cold for ever. I was wrong.
Is it time now?

Six decades vanished in one day!
I bore four sons; one lives; they
Were all good men; three dying young
Was hard on us. I have looked long
For these hills to show me where peace lay . . .
Is it time now?

[Janet Kenny]

David,
Is that a polite reproof?

I considered posting the one you posted too. It is quite nice but again, I am becoming weary of sons and no daughters. Call it a mood. It does fall nicely.
I do like Howard's Marilyn Hacker.

Do you think resigned melancholy is the natural mood for the form?
Janet

[This message has been edited by Janet Kenny (edited January 21, 2005).]

[David Anthony]

Course not, Janet: I flicked from Howard's post to the reply box before reading the following posts.
Interesting question. The answer is, I'm not sure.
I think for a successful rondeau, as with all the repeating forms, it's essential to build resonance with each successive repetition.
Best wishes,
David

[Mike Alexander]

Much as I enjoy the sharing of rondeaux (& I do), I was hoping we'd talk a little about some of the technical implications of the form. Even in Thomas M. Disch's article on the rondeau in <u>An Exaltation of Forms</u> (Finch & Varnes, 2002) he says little more than what it quotes from the Britannica: "the one great fault of the rondeau as a vehicle for deep emotion... the too frequent occurance of the rhyme..." He gives a quick summary of the form's history & his own personal experience in it, but not much in the way of counsel.

"Sonnets are harder to write," he says, but are more "...likely to produce work worth the price of a picture frame..." I'd go farther into this. In many respects, the rondeau presents the very opposite of the sonnet. Structurely, the sonnet is asymmetrical; its bicameral body breaks off-center, so that one call is answered by another, briefer counter-call. Strophe & antistrophe. The rondeau doubles back to its refrain, twice. The only other feature, its twain rhymes, forces the poem to go back over previous ground as well. The second stanza starts the first over again, rhymewise, though the refrain pulls it up short. Then, the third stanza tries again to repeat the first, getting all way through, this time, with a tie-in to the beginning. Head to toe. Its tail clamped in its mouth.

Even looking at the aabba stanza pattern, you can see the urge to turn back, the first couplet trying to make a comeback in the fifth line, as if there were some tension to keep bouncing from rhyme to rhyme in paired couplets until the end of time, or at least the rhyming dictionary. The rondeau is a mirror trying to catch a look at itself.

I'd also say that tetrameter lines accent this mirroring quality even more, as IP accents the asymmetry of the sonnet. Even if you break an IP line in the middle you get two unequal halves. Tetrameter allows the refrain to break the first line neatly in half. Isn't this just perfect for a form that's always doubling back to the beginning?

The "too frequent occurance of the rhyme" remains a problem, but it can also be a strength. In the Flanders Fields poem, the rhymes give a sense of the dead speaking, of fate turning us all under the soil. The refrain in that case is particularly weak; we don't discover new twists of meaning in the phrase "in Flanders fields," really, even if it gains something ominous as the speaker's grave.

I think a bigger built-in weakness, at least in most I've seen, is that the poet rarely plans for the third stanza as much as for the second. Most of the time the last stanza completely disappoints, either through not adding enough or through less intriguing rhymes (we tend to feel stretched in English by the third or fourth couplet in the same rhyme sound.) We need, if we're to make a really serious vehicle out of the rondeau, to treat that ninth-line refrain as we'd treat the volta in a sonnet. If the last stanza turns a new direction, we'd be less likely to see the form as a trifle.


-

Unconnected questions: isn't the Dobson poem a lot like Vincent Voiture's 17th century poem "ma foi, c'est fait de moi, car Isabeau..." (My faith, it's done for me, for Izzie's asked me to make her a rondeau, putting me into extreme pain. What, thirteen lines...")? Isn't Billie Collin's sonnet on writing sonnets built on the same construction?

[A. E. Stallings]

Am glad you brought up the Thomas Disch essay in Exaltation of Forms. I enjoyed it--light though it may be, it is still instructive. It's short enough I have half a mind to type some of it here... but maybe not.

Mike--thanks for your thoughtful and interesting insights--especially per the tetrameter. Perhaps you should write an article?

I do think we have to look at quite a few specimen to decide what makes a rondeau work, so am intrigued to see more.

It is my understanding that the Dobson is in fact a free translation of the Voiture, and that the Dobson/Voiture are models of the form. As Disch points out, Wyatt is the first to bring the form into English (as with the sonnet), but the Dobson kind of jumpstarts its rediscovery.

I think Hardy has examples. Can anyone locate those?

Janet, I am very impressed with yours! Brava!

[Don Kimball]

I'm glad for this forum, with all the examples of the rondeaux and commentary on this form. Thank you, Howard, for posting Barbara Howe's "Death of a Vermont Farm Woman"
- an old favorite of mine. And Janet, I like your rondeau too, with its hard edge. I'll join you in sharing my own attempt at this form:

Song for Folding Sheets

Our fingers know: first, you approach me, spare
in scanty underwear, as though you're there
to proposition me. Though I am slow
to hold my end, to fold - in time, I grow
to seize the day. But you, my dear, don't care

to play, for now you're holding up our share -
inviting me to get a clue! I glare,
then make amends - so, back and forth we go;
out fingers know.

After thirty years of marriage wear,
you must admit - I'm not your Fred Astaire;
nor you my Ginger Rogers; but we do-
si-do, a couple's quid pro quo and, lo,
beneath those panties, jockey shorts - I swear
our fingers know!