Ethan's Villanelle Notes

Ethan Gresko

Villanelle research

 

History:

-           During Renaissance the villanelle and villanico (from Italian villano, or peasant) were Italian and Spanish dance-songs

-           “Villanelle” title implied the poem spoke of simple, often pastoral or rustic themes

-           Some scholars believe it has been in existence since the sixteenth century, while others believe it wasn’t until the late nineteenth century that the villanelle was defined as a fixed form of poetry (it didn’t start out as a fixed form)

 

Information:

-           Form is made up of five tercets followed by a quatrain

-           First and third lines of the opening tercet are repeated alternatively in the last lines of the following stanzas

-           In the final quatrain stanza the refrain serves as the poem’s last two lines

-           KEY:

Capitals = Refrain

Lowercase = Rhymes

 

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

 

Contemporary Context:

-          Contemporary poets have not limited themselves to the themes originally expressed by free-form villanelles of the Renaissance, and have loosened the fixed form to allow variations on the refrains

 

Example from the Norton Anthology of Poetry:

 

 

 

One Art

by 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.

 

 

 

 

 

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.