Poetry Forms: Villanelles

In this article, we look at a structured poem with humble beginnings: villanelles.

This is part 3 of a continually evolving section on poetry. If you’re looking on the methodology of how to start working with nature to craft poetry, click on the link here. If you’re looking for a form of poetry a little less “technical,” try my article on haiku and free verse.

The Villanelle

With such a fancy, refined name, it has to be something either very hoity-toity or foreign, right?

Yes and no.

As defined at poets.org, the villanelle

…is a highly structured poem made up of five tercets followed by a quatrain, with two repeating rhymes and two refrains.

Huh?

For someone not familiar with poetry terms, this sounds like a foreign language. For someone familiar with musical terms, it makes a little more sense…and for good reason. Villanelles started out as Renaissance-era Italian and Spanish dance-songs. The Italian translation for “villano” is peasant. Therefore, villanellas were songs sung by the lower-class as entertainment.

French poets adapted these songs into poems they called villanelles. While there was a rough “form” to the songs, the focus was on the subject: pastoral or rustic themes. This form of poetry, however, didn’t really catch on until it was written in English. English poets likely defined the form, but eventually broke with the pastoral and rustic constraints and used it for all manner of subjects.

We’re pulling it back towards simplicity and focusing on nature.

The Form

Let’s break this definition down so it makes a little more sense.

• A tercet is a 3-line stanza (group of lines) connected by rhyme.
• A quatrain is a 4-line stanza often containing rhymes.
• Refrains are repeated lines, like those found in songs.

So villanelles are 19 lines long- 5 tercets followed by a quatrain (5×3+4). There are 2 end-rhyme sounds, and two of the lines (the first and third) are repeated. This is commonly written as:

A1 b A2 / a b A1 / a b A2 / a b A1 / a b A2 / a b A1 A2

Capital letters represent the repeated lines (A1, A2) and the lowercase letters represent unrepeated, rhyming lines (a, b). Note that the repeated lines all have the same rhyme and rhyme with unrepeated lines. The second rhyme is all unrepeated lines.

The poem has 19 lines, but you’re only writing 13 “original” lines. The other 6 are refrains of the first and third lines.

Still confused?

Take a look at the most well-known modern villanelle and compare the poetic notation to the poem.

Example:

Do not go gentle into that good night

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.