about villanelles

A villanelle is a French poetry form with certain rules.  It has five stanzas of three lines (called tercets) and a four-line finish.  19 lines in all.  The rhyme scheme is simple, ABA in the tercets and ABAA in the four-line finish.  So, it’s fun to write.  You just make a list of A rhyming words and another of B rhyming words.

There’s one more complication:  you have repeating lines.  You alternate using the first and third lines in the tercets, and finish by using them as the last two lines. 

Here’s a really good example of a great poem by 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.

My granddaughter objected to my calling my Tarzan Yell poem a villanelle, because I took liberties with my repeating lines.  I was happy as long as my first-line repetition ended with the word “hell” and my third-line repetition ended with the words “Tarzan yell.” So, I titled it “vaguely villanelleous.” (There probably isn’t such a word, but two weeks ago, when I started this poem, my spellcheck, which I call "Larry," didn’t object.  Today as I write this, Larry doesn’t like it. He's fickle that way.)