Posts tagged villanelles triolets and cinquains oh my
Another Commonplace Book
Gramarye, Divine Philosophy, the Usual
Mad Girl’s Love Song
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
God topples from the sky, hell’s fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan’s men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
I fancied you’d return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
Sylvia Plath
I do love a villanelle. Structured poetry in general, really - the strictness of the rules, and the absolute freedom within them.
As you look up at me and think you know
That in the light of now I’m such and such—
This light has been relinquished long ago.
Logic, in fact, can prove me so and so,
For sight may be a shade less dark than touch.
As you look up at me and think you know,
The arabesque of logic twirls its toe;
Its foothold on a pinhead feigns a clutch—
This sleight has been relinquished long ago.
Feeling itself falls back, tripped up as though
The heart it leant on were too short a crutch,
As you look up at me and think you know.
But let a flash of insight be less slow,
It may retrieve to intuition’s hutch
This light has-been, relinquished long ago:
Mere starlight, obsolete; can only show
A burst that was, and not the coming. Much
As you look up at me and think, you know:
This light has been relinquished long ago.
—John Simon, “Relativity”
Image Credit
I do so love a villanelle.
“The moon is a pearl in the mist and sets the scene.
Comfort seems within reach, just over there,
But rocks, water, and darkness intervene.
Incalculable dangers lie between
Us and the warmth of bedding, the fire’s flare.
The moon is a pearl in the mist and sets the scene;”
Anthony Hecht, from “Nocturne: A Recurring Dream.”
It is, of course, a villanelle. And I am still looking for omens.
“The Witch gave a squawk; her venomous body
Melted into light as water leaves a spring,
And the high green hill sits always by the sea.
At his crossroads, too, the Ancient prayed for me;
Down his wasted cheeks tears of joy were running:
My Dear One is mine as mirrors are lonely.
He kissed me awake and no one was sorry;
The sun shone on sales, eyes, pebbles, anything,
And the high green hill sits always by the sea.”
W. H. Auden, from “Miranda,” in The Sea and the Mirror
I love so much of this. The poem is a villanelle, and I have such a fondness for structured poetry - the balance between rules and art is a liminal space, full of freedom. And The Sea and the Mirror is a retelling of my favorite of Shakespeare’s plays, The Tempest. Auden cracks the play open, and shows its beating heart, and then resurrects it.
