informal talk about forms: the villanelle

by Tom Adam

Without making any judgments about the value of obsession in poetry, the villanelle is an excellent vehicle for obsession. The repeated use of the refrains force the poem to keep circling and grabbing onto a very small set of ideas. This repetition is the key element of the villanelle.

Villanelle of Change
by Edwin Arlington Robinson

Since Persia fell at Marathon,
The yellow years have gathered fast:
Long centuries have come and gone.

And yet (they say) the place will don
A phantom fury of the past,
Since Persia fell at Marathon;

And as of old, when Helicon
Trembled and swayed with rapture vast
(Long centuries have come and gone),

This ancient plain, when night comes on,
Shakes to a ghostly battle-blast,
Since Persia fell at Marathon.

But into soundless Acheron
The glory of Greek shame was cast:
Long centuries have come and gone,

The suns of Hellas have all shone,
The first has fallen to the last:—
Since Persia fell at Marathon,
Long centuries have come and gone.

A quick summation of the form: a fixed-form villanelle has five tercets rhymed a b a, and a quatrain rhymed a b a a, with the rhymes continuing throughout the poem. The first line of the villanelle is the first refrain, and is repeated as lines six, 12 and 18. The third line of the poem is the second refrain is repeated as lines 9, 15 and 19.

In notation, the villanelle would have this line structure:

A1
b
A2

a
b
A1

a
b
A2

a
b
A1

a
b
A2

a
b
A1
A

A1 and A2 are the refrains. On the positive side of things, you only write 13 lines and get a 19-line poem out of it. On the downside, there are only two rhyme sounds, and two of the lines have to be really good because they come up four times each.

Although the villanelle has a fairly rigid form when it comes to rhyme and repetition, it’s fairly open outside that. Traditionally, it has been written in hendecasyllables* (in Italian), alexandrines (in French), or iambic pentameter (in English), but many authors of the villanelle have avoided meter. The length is also flexible. The fixed form of 19 lines is typical of the villanelle, but as long as the rhyme and stanza structure are maintained, the villanelle can add or remove stanzas as needed. Some villanelles have been 50 or 80 lines long.

Another thing to consider is the use of enjambment. In “Villanelle of Change,” Robinson has ended most lines at syntactic breaks. Syntactic breaks and end-stopped lines are common, but there are some benefits to stronger enjambment, particularly with the refrains. If you write refrains that can be broken out and function as different parts of sentences, that gives you quite a bit more flexibility in shaping the poem but it does lessen the repetition. Enjambment can also help mellow the rhymes — since there are only two sounds, they can get overpowering.

At the Poetry Foundation website they have “Villanelle of Change” and 18 other villanelles. If you haven’t read it, I strongly recommend “One Art” by Elizabeth Bishop. It is an excellent example of the form. And if anyone has copy of Anne Sexton’s My Friends, My Friend,” take note of how she shakes up the villanelle a bit.

*While Wikipedia may have quite a bit of useful information on many topics, there are a number of books with more authoritative information on prosody. I recommend:

• Rhyme’s Reason by John Hollander
• The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
• A Poet’s Guide to Poetry by Mary Kinze