Villanelle

The villanelle is a French form that comes from Italian folk lore. The name derives from both villa and villain. The poem “Villanelle” by the French poet, Jean Passerat (1534-16020, was the first poem using the strict form that we now know as the villanelle.

The villanelle has 6 stanzas – five with three lines and the final one with four. In the first stanza, the first and third lines rhyme with each other as do all the middle lines of all the first five stanzas. The first and third lines of the first stanza are the final lines, in alternating order of each of the next three-line stanzas. The sixth stanza, with four lines, has the first line rhyme with the very first line in the poem and the second line rhymes with the second line in the poem. The final two lines of the stanza are the two lines that repeated throughout the poem.

Rather than give you charts and graphs with numbers and letters of the rhyme schemes and repetitions, I’ll give some examples.

There are some well-known poems in this form, particularly Dylan Thomas’s “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night” and Elizabeth Bishop’s “One Art”. Both are copied below. My best advice for writing one of these is to choice your rhyming words carefully. Don’t use “rabbits” (I know from experience.) or “oranges”(I’m not even going to try.). You’ll only make it more difficult. My poem “Say Goodbye to the Rabbits” is below and my only other published villanelle is “Three Firsts” – yesterday’s occasional poem. 

 

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night – Dylan Thomas

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.

 

One Art – Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

And my own: Say Goodbye to the Rabbits

I’ll say goodbye to the rabbits.

The landlord needs this space so

I’ll have to move now, make new habits.

 

This home my writing inhabits

will be changed after I go,

once I say goodbye to the rabbits.

 

I’ve grown fond of the wildlife that cohabits

this view of the saltmarsh, though

I have to move now, make new habits.

 

I say goodbye to the deer, the abbots

of the saltmarsh, to the leaves, the snow

while I say goodbye to the rabbits.

 

My life had bloomed, where now I blab its

change to all the writers I know.

I am moving now, making new habits.

 

I think “opportunity” as I grab its

challenge, even though by now I know

I have said goodbye to the rabbits

I have moved now, made new habits.