Types Of Poem Forms - French Villanelle Poems

When I was first introduced to the French Villanelle fixed poem form, I remember thinking surely this is a cruel joke some villain thought up because it seemed pure evil and torture to be made to write one. Of course, this probably had a lot to do with being a student and not being overly fond of anything that had a lot of “rules. Add that and the fact that as a teen, I failed to notice that “Villanelle” wasn’t exactly spelled the same as “villian” but it was a perfectly logical conclusion. What I found out in writing that first Villanelle is that this fixed form is a delight to write, and relatively easy once you get into the rhythm of it.

Later, I learned that it turns out that both words (villanelle and villian) come from an Italian word “villanella” that evolved from and came from a different word “villanus” which more or less meant “country song” or dance or some combination thereof. While “villain” also came from the same source, that word originally meant “farm servant.” So I accidently connected the right dots on both words, but whether or not the farm servant and the farm song became evil is debatable. Anyway, the Villanelle poem form was for several centuries a work in progress. It progressed from agricultural songs of dance and music of no fixed form during the Middle Ages to a strict poem form by the 19^th century with a lot of rules.

The Villanelle may have started out as a French poem form, but it became very popular at times by English poets during the late 1800s and less and less popular in France. Unlike the Sestina poem form, the Villanelle isn’t suitable for telling stories or narratives. It is however very useful for both serious poems as well as for writing playful poems.

• Always begin writing your Villanelle with the first two rhyming sounds revealing the sentiment of your poem’s theme.
• This fixed poem form may have only two rhyme sounds.
• Villanelle poems are nineteen lines long.
• Villanelle poems have five three lined stanzas.
• Villanelle poems always end in a quatrain.
• The refrain couplet, which ends the poem consists of lines one and three of the first stanza.
• Line one (the first half of the refrain) ends stanzas two and four.
• Line three (the other half of the refrain) ends stanzas three and five.
• The lines of a Villanelle can be any length.
• Villanelle have no rigid fixed meter even though in the past they were trimeter or tetrameter, and today are often pentameter.

Thus, you end up with a Villanelle poem pattern as below:

1a, 2, 1b

2, 1a, 1

2, 1b, 1

2, 1a, 1

2, 1a, 1b

Sometimes I am a golden yellow marigold of short degree

Sometimes a tall red cockscomb or long stemmed yellow rose

Or a mere bloom of popularity growing alone

Kissed by the gentle wind of a far away island

Far from my azure town

Sometimes I am a golden yellow marigold of short degree

So on journey my senses awakened

Could I be in company and kissed by the rain and sun glows?

Or a mere bloom of popularity growing alone

Is it field or vase for whom I'm destined?

Or a bouquet for someone to propose?

Sometimes I am a golden yellow marigold of short degree

Is it that I'm to be woven into a garland?

Or stuck between the blank pages of a book yet to compose?

A mere bloom of popularity growing alone

Here to sanctify and applaud my legend

Into the hearts of those historically unaware of my prose

Sometimes I am a golden yellow marigold of short degree

Or a mere bloom of popularity growing alone

Jerilee Wei © 2011

• W. H. Auden "If I Could Tell You"
• Elizabeth Bishop “One Art”
• James Joyce (Stephen Dedalus) “A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man”
• Jean Passerat “Villanelle” and “The Making Of A Poem”
• Sylvia Plath "Mad Girl's Love Song"
• Theodroe Roethke "The Waking"
• Edwin Arlington Robinson “The House On The Hill”
• Dylan Thomas “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night”
• Oscar Wilde “Theocritus”