Rage, Rage Against the Dying of the Villanelle!

The villanelle comes from the Latin word "villanus", or farmhand, and the Italian word "villano" or peasant.  The original villanelles focussed on pastoral subjects, hence the name.  A villanelle is a fixed form of verse, consisting of 19 lines of five tercets and one quatrain.  The first and third lines of the first tercet are repeated alternately until the last stanza which includes both repeated lines.

In 1606, Jean Passerat was credited with introducing the modern villanelle to the world with his poem, written in Old French, "J'ay perdu ma Tourterelle".

While the French popularized the villanelle, the English soon were writing their own villanelles by the late 19th Century.  No longer focussing on pastoral subjects, obsessions tended to be a popular topic; for example, the aestheticism of the 1890's.  James Joyce wrote a villanelle for his novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man".  William Empson revived the poetic form in the 1930's.  Likely the most common villanelle is Dylan's Thomas' "Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night" (1951) at  http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/do-not-go-gentle-good-night:

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 song 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.

http://www.dphotographer.co.uk/image/5403/the_dying_of_the_light

In 1976, Elizabeth Bishop composed "One Art", also a well received villanelle.  The 1980's and 1990's saw the rise of New Formalism and more villanelles.

Here is my villanelle, The Wilhelm Gustloff Villanelle, written in 2008, based on the evacuation of thousands of East Prussians in early 1945:

On an icy night in '45

East Prussian refugees swarmed the ship

Desperately seeking to stay alive.

The boat filled quickly with soldiers' wives

And babes with knuckels between their lips

On an icy night in '45.

Fleeing the Russians' relentless drive

The ship steamed west at a rapid clip

Desperately seeking to stay alive.

Beneath the Baltic, the sub took dives

Aborting the steamer's fateful trip

On an icy night in '45.

Scrambling for lifeboats, many did strive

Thousands jumped as she started to tip

Desperately seeking to stay alive.

Under the corpses, the last to survive

Was a baby blue from winter's grip

On an icy night in '45

Desperately seeking to stay alive.

http://www.wilhelmgustloff.com/images/ikappes_painting.jpg

The Shakespearean Sonnet: A Thing of Beauty

The Shakespearean Sonnet is one of the oldest traditions in English poetry.  Composed of 14 lines this sonnet follows the following rhyming scheme:  ABAB, CDCD, EFEF, GG.  It is written in iambic pentameter:  each line is composed of five feet; each foot is composed of an unstressed followed by a stressed syllable (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iambic_pentameter).

It is divided into three quatrains and one couplet.  The first quatrain introduces the main theme or metaphor.  The second quatrain extends the theme or metaphor.  The third quatrain gives the poem an unexpected twist, called peripeteia.  The couplet summarizes the poem; it gives the poem a concluding image (http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/writing-a-sonnet.html).

One of Shakespeare's most popular sonnets is Sonnet 18:

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate.

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer's lease hath all too short a date.

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines

And often is his gold complexion dimmed;

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance or nature's changing course, untrimmed.

But they eternal summer shall not fade,

Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest,

Nor shall death brag thou wanderest in his shade,

When in eternal lines to time thou growest.

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

http://www.polyvore.com/shall_compare_thee_to_summers/contest.show?id=177037

Here is a Shakespearean sonnet I wrote in 2006 about a bridge that Rob and I used to visit in St. Mary's, Ontario, called As I Stand on the Old Train Bridge:

O'er the river Thames the red sun disappears

As I stand on the old train bridge looking down.

I can almost hear the trains of yesteryear

Winding their weary way through the old stone town.

The river carves a path through the fertile ground.

Next to the running water lies a lush plain.

The grass is so green and the trees do abound

Where Jersey cows once grazed beneath passing trains.

Two ducks take a long drink after the soft rain.

As they hide behind a swaying poplar tree.

In the distance grows a field of golden grain

As far away as the naked eye can see.

As I stand on the old train bridge, silence speaks:

And a hush falls over the meandering creak.

http://www.townofstmarys.com/discover/attractions/attractions.aspx?id=4332