Villanelle

In their book The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms, Mark Strand and Boland Eavan discuss the structures and functions that are unique to the poetic form known as the villanelle. Initially, they discuss the more obvious aspects of the villanelle. A villanelle is formed by five stanzas "of three lines each" followed by a final stanza "of four lines." Strand and Eavan continue their discussion of a villanelle's structure by making the following more specific observations: "The first line of the first stanza serves as the last line of the second and fourth stanzas. The third line of the first stanza serves as the last line of the third and fifth stanzas. And these two refrain lines reappear to constitute the last two lines of the closing quatrain... The rhyme scheme is aba," a scheme that is maintained until the final quatrain, where the scheme changes to abab. In addition to its structure, a villanelle's function also serves to distinguish it from other poetic forms. As Strand and Eavan assert, "Perhaps the single feature of the villanelle that twentieth-century poets most made their own is the absence of narrative possibility. Firgural development is possible in a villanelle. But the fore refuses to tell a story. It circle around and around... suggesting at the deepest level, powerful recurrences of mood and emotion and memory." The structure of a villanelle, with its consistently repeating elements, is the source of a villanelle's function and underlying complexity; a villanelle's structure must therefore remain unchanged from its usual format for it to more effectively communicate the messages that are unique to its form, at least accruing to Strand and Eavan's reasoning. Considering the various characteristics of villanelles examined by Strand and Eavan, I believe that, out of the three villanelle poems mentioned in this blog's prompt, "Do Not Go into That Good Night" most truly encompasses the themes and suggestive elements unique to a villanelle. Unlike the other two poems, "Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night" does not stray once from the structure established by the typical villanelle. As a result, there is a cyclical, repetitive nature to "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night" that is not nearly as apparent in "The Walking" and "One Art," a quality that is essential to a villanelle's meaning. While both "The Walking: and "One Art" follow the typical structure of a villanelle for the most part, they do ten to vary in their structure; consequently, both also tend to suggest progression of a story, a quality that should be absent in villanelle poems.