I’m just having way too much fun in this poetry class. The haiku and sonnets were fun to write, but the villanelle was a real treat! According to the instructions, the first thing you need with a villanelle is a pair of rhyming lines that are the heart of your poem’s meaning. You then put an unrhymed line between these two, to make a three-line stanza. The second stanza begins with a line that rhymes with the basic couplet, then a line that rhymes with the middle line you added, and finally the first line of the couplet, repeated. The third stanza has a first line rhyming with the couplet, followed by a line rhyming with the second line, and then the second line of the couplet repeated. The alternating two lines of the base couplet become more and more meaningful with each repetition. That is why the success of the form depends so much on the careful selection of the couplet. The poem then goes on this way for a total of five three-line stanzas, trading off the two base lines, and ends with a sixth stanza that adds the second line of the stanza one last time. This poetic form has had a resurgence in the last hundred years. Probably the best of the poems produced during this time is Dylan Thomas’s reflection on the death of his father, Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night. And according to my professor, probably one of the best poems of the twentieth century of any kind…
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage, against the dying of the light.Though Wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
No pressure or anything (!) Ok, so here’s my villanelle…
STEADY AS SHE GOES: A VILLANELLE
Fear not those demons that claw, so wicked and severe.
I hoist my tattered sail in vain aboard this forsaken ship.
Travel slow and steady now. Forget not what brought you here.Mercy come and swiftly soothe this suffering I bear
Bitterness, bind me not unto your toxic, lethal grip
Fear not those demons that claw, so wicked and severe.Pay not a mind to these gashes and tears
As from this fragile shell my fractious soul may rip
Travel slow and steady now. Forget not what brought you here.Though light of day fades and dark horizons near
Surrender will be the cost of this long, wayward trip
Fear not those demons that claw, so wicked and severe.Braver men were conquered on their wretched journeys here
Feeling doomed and ever worse, shamed repentance on our lips.
Travel slow and steady now. Forget not what brought you here.While men set their courses, so detailed, strong and clear,
Even their best-laid plans do swiftly dissolve and slip.
Fear not those demons that claw, so wicked and severe.
Travel slow and steady now. Forget not what brought you here.
Tell me what you see when you read it. Let me know what works and doesn’t work for you. I am in the throes of revision and I could use a critique or three.
