Thanks, Matt

Got a link to a great poem yesterday, from Matt. I rarely see villanelles that I actually like, but this one ranks among the few.

Read it through, and see if you notice the frequency of the repetitions. What I like most about trying to write repeating lines is using grammar and line breaks to switch up the repetition (which Lloyd does very well in her poem).

Most villanelles come off as stiff, mechanical. The ones I see printed most in textbooks read as though their repeating lines are tacked on to the ends of each tercet, there only to fulfill their dry function. But this poem reads easily, and the speaker’s voice comes through despite the rigid requirements of the form (going so far as to pull off a rather funny line at the quatrain).

Good stuff. For those not familiar with the villanelle, read through the poem and see if you can figure out the rhyme scheme.