Day 18 Villanelle

At first glance, the villanelle is an extrememly complicated form, a poetic tour de force, if you will. The highly structured villanelle is a nineteen-line poem with two repeating rhymes and two refrains. The first and third lines of the opening tercet are repeated alternately in the last lines of the succeeding stanzas; then in the final stanza, the refrain serves as the poem's two concluding lines.

The villanelle’s complex and artificial form can, nonetheless, generate an impression of simplicity and spontaneity. It is characterized by nineteen lines divided into five tercets and a final four-line stanza, using only two rhymes:

A B A A B A A B A A B A A B A A B A A

Lines 1 and 3 become strands woven throughout the poem in a complex pattern, even resembling a refrain since each line is repeated three times.

Refrain 1 (R1) = line 1 = lines 6, 12, and 18

Refrain 2 (R2) = line 3 = lines 9, 15, and 19

Originally, the form was used for poetic expression which was idyllic, delicate, simple, and slight. The two refrain lines, however, can be made thunderingly forceful producing an elemental gravity and power, as it does in the most famous of villanelles.

“Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night” by Dylan Thomas

“The Waking” by Theodore Roethke

“The House on the Hill” by Edwin Arlington Robinson

“Mad Girl's Love Song” by Sylvia Plath

Robert Haas says, “The effect is mesmerizing; it makes of the music of the poem a kind of haunted waltz. It’s easier to give examples than to describe it.” In contrast, Vince Gotera calls it a nightmare. Even so, the form has a special appeal to modern poets because of its demands. Poetry Foundation lists 19 villanelles on its site. Ariadna Ust gives some tips on how to write a villanelle.

Author Philip K. Jason sees the villanelle as presenting a three-part structure of meaning: “introduction, development, and conclusion. . .this tendency for the material to split into three sections lends itself nicely to duality, dichotomy, and debate.” --from “Modern Versions of the Villanelle,” College Literature, 1980.

View a video reading of this poem from PBS Voices and Visions.

Your Turn: Now you get to try your hand at the AP Prompt that accompanied this poem.

Prompt: Write an essay in which you describe how the speaker’s attitude toward loss in lines 16-19 is related to her attitude toward loss in lines 1-15. Using specific references to the text, show how verse form and language contribute to the reader’s understanding of these attitudes.