The Villanelle: The Evolution of a Poetic Form

by Ron McFarland

From Wikipedia: A villanelle, also known as villanesque,[1] is a nineteen-line poetic form consisting of five tercets followed by a quatrain. There are two refrains and two repeating rhymes, with the first and third line of the first tercet repeated alternately at the end of each subsequent stanza until the last stanza, which includes both repeated lines. The villanelle is an example of a fixed verse form. The word derives from Latin, then Italian, and is related to the initial subject of the form being the pastoral.The form started as a simple ballad-like song with no fixed form; this fixed quality would only come much later, from the poem "Villanelle (J'ay perdu ma Tourterelle)" (1606) by Jean Passerat. From this point, its evolution into the "fixed form" used in the present day is debated. Despite its French origins, the majority of villanelles have been written in English, a trend which began in the late nineteenth century. The villanelle has been noted as a form that frequently treats the subject of obsessions, and one which appeals to outsiders; its defining feature of repetition prevents it from having a conventional tone.".

161 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1987

Reviews

[Drew · Rating 2 out of 5]

The early chapters of this text are pretty academic and the reader would benefit from at least a basic comprehension of French and Italian, which I do not possess. And so while I appreciate the historical depths to which scholar Ron McFarland has dived, I was often left doggypaddling around the edges of his untranslated examples. The book becomes more accessible (for me, at least) when McFarland shifts to poems written in English but even then "The Villanelle" failed to win me over, in part because I don't think the author and I share similar tastes in writing. I thank him nonetheless for introducing me to Edwin Arlington Robinson's "The House on the Hill," W.H. Auden's "Alone," Sylvia Plath's "Mad Girl's Love Song," Weldon Kees' "The Crack Moving Down the Wall," Marilyn Hacker's "Villanelle for D.G.B.," Alberto Rios' "La Sequia/The Drought," and even W.E. Henley's comical light verse "A Dainty Thing's the Villanelle." (I already knew Dylan Thomas' "Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night" and Elizabeth Bishop's "One Art.") It would've taken a long time to track these poems down all by my lonesome; much longer that the time it took to read this book.