Occasion solemn,
The music tiresome;
Assembly sodden,
A spooky cooee.
A man, young, desi,
With covered breast says:
Am dead can you see?
My soul is soaring!
None hear him speaking;
Some chatter, cry, talk.
Many go mocking
The life he had led.
Abound accounts fed
To damage might his.
They’re tales that now tread
Amid yarns spun well.
But what’s heard most well:
Unholy sad knell.
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Villanelles, also known as villanesques, have always fascinated us, and we’re pretty sure they always will. But what exactly is a villanelle? What qualifies a poem as a villanelle? And is it easy to write one? In this post, we’ll answer these questions and explore one of poetry’s most intriguing fixed verse forms.
The English word villanelle is derived from the Italian villanella, meaning a rustic song or dance. In turn, villanella comes from villano, meaning a peasant. Originally, villanelles were imitations of peasant songs and did not follow any fixed poetic structure. Although the form was first developed by French poets and balladeers, most villanelles written today are in English. A villanelle is one of the best-known examples of fixed-verse poetry, the opposite of free verse.
Now that we know where the word villanelle comes from, let’s look at its defining characteristics. A villanelle is a short poem consisting of 19 lines. While these lines are generally concise, there is no prescribed length for each one. Likewise, there are no rules governing the number of syllables per line.
Although modern villanelles do not require a fixed meter, many nineteenth-century examples were written in trimeter. That said, tetrameter and pentameter have also been used successfully.
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As we’ve seen, a villanelle consists of 19 lines arranged into six stanzas. The first five stanzas are tercets (three lines each), while the final stanza is a quatrain (four lines).
The hallmark of a villanelle is its use of repetition. The first line of the opening tercet is repeated as the final line of the second and fourth tercets and as the penultimate line of the concluding quatrain. Likewise, the third line of the opening tercet reappears as the final line of the third and fifth tercets before concluding the poem as the final line of the quatrain. Minor variations are acceptable, but the repeated lines should remain recognisably the same.
In other words, every villanelle contains two refrains. It may sound like a lot of rules—and it is—but these very constraints are what give the form its distinctive musicality and emotional power.
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Writing a villanelle is no easy feat. In addition to its strict pattern of repeated lines, it follows a tightly controlled rhyme scheme. Only two rhyme sounds are used throughout the poem. Each tercet follows the ABA rhyme scheme, while the concluding quatrain follows ABAA.
The rhyme-and-refrain pattern may be represented as follows:
A¹bA² / abA¹ / abA² / abA¹ / abA² / abA¹A²
Here, A and B represent the rhyme sounds, while A¹ and A² denote the two refrains. Both refrains rhyme with the A sound.
A villanelle is a carefully structured poem that:
If you’d like to explore the form further, here are a few classic villanelles:
ALSO READ | Ten Idioms Used in Daily Conversations
Using idioms while speaking is the hallmark of a proficient speaker. If you’re looking to enhance your vocabulary, the list of idioms in this post will be tremendously helpful. We have chosen ten commonly used idioms that you can use in your daily conversations. You might chance upon them time and again while watching English news debates and television shows. So if you are ready, let’s go!
a breath of fresh air
Meaning: Something or someone new and unique that makes everything appear highly refreshing or exciting
Example sentences:
be all in a day’s work
Meaning: If something hard is said to be all in a day’s work, it means it is part of the job one is doing.
Example sentences:
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deep pockets
Meaning: A person or company is said to have deep pockets if it has a lot of money.
Example sentences:
go/run deep
Meaning: If a problem runs or goes deep, it means it has not only existed for a long time but is also very serious.
Example sentences:
first-come, first-served
Meaning: This idiomatic expression is used to state that something is first handed over to someone who asks for it first.
Example sentences:
right off the bat
Meaning: Right now/Immediately
Example sentences:
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come under fire
Meaning: To get broadsided or criticised
Example sentences:
Note: ‘From all quarters’, which is also an idiomatic expression, means ‘from a lot of people or places’.
as free as a bird
Meaning: Utterly independent
Example sentences:
beyond/without a shadow of a doubt
Meaning: With no doubt at all
Example sentences:
low-key
Meaning: Not meant to attract a lot of attention
Example sentences:
We hope this list of idioms helped you enhance your existing level of vocabulary. You may leave a comment below to share your thoughts on what you feel about this post.
Indie author A M Hounchell wrote his very first story in kindergarten. ‘It was a love story between a rabbit and a grasshopper,’ begins Hounchell, speaking with Literary Harbinger in an exclusive interaction. His answers to each of our questions are crisp and direct yet thoughtful. As a matter of fact, on being asked if he remembers his oldest story, he responds with a smile, ‘I still have that yellowed page somewhere in my house actually. And yes, I do remember the story.’
With several books currently in his kitty, the Kansas-based author, who has a bachelor’s degree in creative writing, lets us know he is a big fan of the flashlight method. ‘I just write what comes naturally and let everything grow organically. I have never been able to use outlines because it feels limiting,’ he says.
Talking about his very first book Zumanity, which he started working upon two years ago, the 26-year-old, who often jokes his blue veins are filled with ink, says, ‘Every zombie story has the one character that holds onto its humanity for a bit longer than everyone else. But what if that continued for a longer period of time? The main character in Zumanity falls to her death shortly after being bitten by a zombie, so she has an odd transformation.’
Nonetheless, it is his second book that he considers his magnum opus. Titled Running out of Time, Hounchell makes known that it came about mostly as a joke about an ordinary guy being the centre of a cosmic battle between time and space. ‘It’s grown in the last four years to a five-book series with a sixth on the way. It’s unedited, absurd, and experimental,’ Hounchell explains.
On being asked who his favourite author is, Hounchell, who has 35 works in progress as you read this (and you read it right!), doesn’t take more than a second to splutter Piers Anthony’s name. ‘His Xanth novels are filled to the brim with puns and magical wonder. In fact, during my time in college, I contacted him for my senior capstone project, and he got back to me,’ Hounchell makes known.
Anyhow, if you ended up thinking this young author’s life revolved only around books, you would be mistaken; for Hounchell divulges that writing apart, blacksmithing is something that he is keenly interested in. But he categorically states he is not great at juggling between two or more tasks at a given point in time. ‘Especially now, everything is changed for the worse. I’m looking for a new job and just trying to survive while writing,’ he states, adding, ‘I read, play video games, and when I finally find time to start blacksmithing, I shall do it. I’m reading up on it right now.’
Hounchell says he writes when he feels the urge. ‘I sometimes write thousands of words at once, and other times I write twenty. Since I don’t have outlines, I just have story ideas rattling in my head constantly,’ he lets on. ‘I try to write an hour or two before bed though,’ he adds. Be that as it may, there is something that he is extremely excited for. ‘It’s my solo gamebook Technomancer and the Sword,’ he says. And does he want to become a full-fledged author? ‘I can’t plan on anything, but I want to make writing a full-time career when I can,’ he says.
A player of Dungeons and Dragons, Hounchell has a piece of advice for budding authors who feel discouraged if their works don’t do well. ‘I want to tell them not to get discouraged,’ he says, only to add, ‘but it’s hard to feel that way sometimes.’ He stresses, ‘Instead, try to take your little victories when you get them. Sometimes, just the fact that your friend bought your book should be enough. One step at a time.’
And as our discussion comes to a close, we ask him if there is anything he would like to change in the world. ‘Wealth inequality,’ he utters. ‘It seems ridiculous that CEOs make 10000% more money than their employees,’ he points out before signing off.
