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Annie Finch

Villanelles

Villanelles cover

Random House/Everymans Library, 2012
Coedited with Marie-Elizabeth Mali
Chosen as a "Best Gift Book of 2012" by Garrison Keillor

“The definitive anthology of a form that has fascinated poets for two centuries and is enjoying a revival among a great diversity of poets writing today.”

“The first of its kind–a comprehensive collection of the best of the villanelle, a delightful poetic form whose popularity ranks only behind that of the sonnet and the haiku.”

“With its intricate rhyme scheme and dance-like pattern of repeating lines, its marriage of recurrence and surprise, the villanelle is a form that has fascinated poets since its introduction almost two centuries ago. Many well-known poets in the past have tried their hands at the villanelle, and the form is enjoying a revival among poets writing today. The poems collected here range from the classic villanelles of the nineteenth century to such famous and memorable examples as Dylan Thomas’s “Do not go gentle into that good night,” Elizabeth Bishop’s “One Art,” and Sylvia Plath’s “Mad Girl’s Love Song.” Here too are the cutting-edge works of contemporary poets, including Sherman Alexie, Lorna Dee Cervantes, Rita Dove, Seamus Heaney, Paul Muldoon, and many others whose poems demonstrate the dazzling variety that can be found within the parameters of a single, strict form.”
-Amazon.com

REVIEWS

“The villanelle is less well known than its sisters, the sonnet and haiku, but no less dazzling. “Villanelles’’ (Knopf) is a gorgeous pocket-sized collection edited by poets Annie Finch and Marie-Elizabeth Mali. You may think you don’t know this poetic form, but some villanelles are hiding in plain sight: Consider the Dylan Thomas’S poem “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night.’’ A villanelle is a 19-line poem with two lines that start out separated and are coupled by the end. What makes this collection so rich is its diversity, how it veers from the comical to the metaphysical to the erotic and the political.”
—Jan Gardner, The Boston Globe

“Villanelles is a brilliant collection!’”
— “Best Recent Poetry,” The Telegraph

DANCING WITH THE VILLANELLE

The villanelle is one of the most fascinating and paradoxical of poetic forms, quirky and edgy yet second to no other European form but the sonnet in importance; prone to moods of obsession and delight; structured through the marriage of repetition and surprise. No wonder it is currently enjoying such a powerful postmodern blossoming, out of long-growing premodernist roots. This book includes a sampling of some of the most interesting and significant villanelles written in English before the twenty-first century, as well as a great range of superb contemporary villanelles by a remarkable diversity of poets.

This book is likely the most comprehensive anthology devoted to a single poetic form ever assembled; because of the form’s relatively brief history, it offers an unparalleled opportunity to understand how poetic forms grow, as individual poets change a poem’s shape, play with its constraints, dance with its tradition, and challenge its readers anew. The manageable focus of the form is one reason editing this book has been such a joy. Another reason is our partnership; one of us devoted to form, the other closely linked to performance, we have pooled our talents and insights with a mutual delight in which we hope our readers will share.

A glance through the book will show that it abounds with gems. Most poets write only one or two villanelles in a lifetime, and when they do choose to use the form, they have good reason to do so. It’s simply not a form that gets chosen lightly. Furthermore, it’s a hard form to fake; as editors we found it quite straightforward to choose the strongest villanelles. And the villanelle has appealed to such a delicious variety of poets, from slam poets to the avant-garde and everyone in between, that will find this a book filled with diversity and surprises, at the same time that the quality of poetry remains remarkably and consistently high from poet to poet.

This book includes lyrical, spiritual, political, erotic, comical, narrative, whimsical, loving, and metaphysical villanelles. They all share a quality of freshness, an air of discovery that befits a form with such a recent history. Unlike the sonnet—the only more prevalent fixed form in English—the villanelle has no centuries of courtly performance behind it; it is a democratic form, with origins in communal country dance. Perhaps that’s one reason it appeals to contemporary poets from such a wide range of backgrounds and aesthetics. With repetitions crying out for dramatic emphasis and contrast, villanelles lend themselves to performance; it’s no coincidence that coeditor Marie-Elizabeth Mali has deep connections with the world of “off the page” poetry. But as this book manifests, many experimental poets and narrative free-verse poets have been writing villanelles as well.

In fact, the importance of the villanelle has been sneaking up on the poetry world for decades. All the while some were humoring this adamantly artificial form as a bauble or curiosity, poets from all of poetry’s corners have laid aside mid-twentieth-century prejudices against “artifice” and jumped in to the dance. They have brought the villanelle to critical mass, making this book a necessity. And, in the process, they have done much to birth an era of poetics where patterned and free-form poems are beginning to flourish together. The self-contained, grounded sonnet could never have achieved such an evolution for poetic form; it’s the villanelle’s spiralling momentum, its constantly evolving trajectory, that spins it off the page and into so many and new permutations.

The key to a good villanelle is to come up with two lines that are genuinely attracted to each other but also wholly independent of each other, so that their final coupling will feel both inevitable and surprising. With its roots in dance, a good villanelle is like a good romantic relationship. The two lines that structure it are dying to get together; there is a period of suspense before they do get together; and in the meantime, a changing context provides a series of new discoveries about the lines each time they appear. The form keeps the lines close but apart through six stanzas of mounting tension until they join in the last two lines of the poem. With these demands, it is no wonder that good villanelles in English are quite rare. This book demonstrates that they are also unforgettable.

Villanelles is organized into three self-explanatory sections. “Classic Villanelles” is arranged chronologically to give the reader a sense of the slow initial development of the form. “Contemporary Villanelles” uses alphabetical order to organize the great burst of recent poets of all backgrounds and aesthetics who have written superb villanelles. “Variations on the Villanelle” opens a door to the many possible permutations of this fascinating form.

Paul Oppenheimer writes that the sonnet, developed by a twelfth-century lawyer out of a folk song form, helped develop the modern idea of the isolated, three-dimensional and self-sufficient self. What might it mean about the twenty-first century idea of self that we are so increasingly captivated by the villanelle? Based in communal dance rather than individual song, spiralling back repeatedly to the same refrains, often moving from obsession to acceptance through the simple movements of repetition, perhaps the villanelle teaches us something about sharing and returning, integrating, and learning to let go: good lessons for our time. You now hold in your hands the definitive collection of poems in this compelling and addictive form. Enjoy the dance!

—Annie Finch

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Editors’ Acknowledgements
Preface: Dancing with the Villanelle
Introduction: The History of the Villanelle
JEAN PASSERAT J’ay perdu ma tourterelle

THE VILLANELLE TRADITION

EMILY PFIEFFER
When the Brow of June

THOMAS HARDY
The Caged Trush Freed and Home Again

W.E HENLEY
Villanelle

JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY
The Best Is Good Enough

SIR EDMUND GOSSE
Wouldst Thou Not Be Content to Die

OSCAR WILDE
Theocritus- A Villanelle

EDITH M. THOMAS
Across the World I Speak to Thee

MAY PROBYN
Villanelle

JOHN DAVIDSON
Untitled

ERNEST DOWSON
Villanelle of Sunset

EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON
The House on the Hill

JAMES JOYCE
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

EUGENE O’NEILL
Villanelle of Ye Young Poet’s
First Villanelle to His Ladye and Ye
Difficulties Thereof

WILLIAM EMPSON
Missing Dates

W.H AUDEN
If I Could Tell You

THEODORE ROETHKE
The Waking

ELIZABETH BISHOP
One Art

DYLAN THOMAS
Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night

WELDON KEES
Villanelle

HOWARD NEMEROV
Equations of a Villanelle

SYLVIA PLATH
Mad Girl’s Love Song

CONTEMPORARY VILLANELLES

ELIZABETH ALEXANDER
Teacher

SHERMAN ALEXIE
Dangerous Astronomy

AGHA SHAHID ALI
A Villanelle

SUZANNE ALLEN
Keep Them All

JULIA ALVAREZ
Women’s Work

TIEL AISHA ANSARI
Fluid Boundaries

CORRINE BAIN
Villanelle for the Jealous

NED BALBO
Ophelia: A Wreath

ROBIN BECKER
Villanelle for a Lesbian Mom

BRUCE BENNETT
Spilled

TARA BETTS
Damned Multi-tudes

RONALD BOTTRALL
Would It Be Better to Be Dead?

MARION BOYER
The Cattle Graze, Grow Fat

ANTOINETTE BRIM
Black Enough

LEE ANN BROWN
Villanelle to Beth

STEPHEN BURT
For Lindsay Whalen

RAFAEL CAMPO
The Enemy

JARED CARTER
Labyrinth

LORNA DEE CERVANTES
A Blue Wake for New Orleans

CHERYL CLARKE
What Goes Around Comes Around or
The Proof Is in the Pudding

MARTHA COLLINS
The Story We Know

WENDY COPE
Lonely Hearts

STEVEN CRAMER
Villanelle After a Burial

GRAHAME DAVIES
Grey

DEBORAH DIGGES
The Rockettes

TOM DISCH
Villanelle for Charles Olson

TIMOTHY DONNELLY
Clair de Lune

SEAN THOMAS DOUGHERTY
Valvano Villanelle

DENISE DUHAMEL
“Please Don’t Sit Like a Frog,
Sit Like a Queen”

JOHN EDMINSTER
Martha and Mary

MARTÍN ESPADA
The Prisoners of Saint Lawrence

RHINA P. ESPAILLAT
Song

SUSAN FEALY
Metamorphosis

ANNIE FINCH
Beach of Edges

MARK FORD
Fragments

WENDY GALGAN
Burning Angels: March 25, 1911

SUZANNE GARDINIER
Tonight

CLAUDIA GARY
The Topiarist

TAYLOR GRAHAM
Black Country Coal, 1868

ERIC GUERRIERI
Hungry Traveler Villanelle

MARILYN HACKER
Villanelle for D.G.B

DURIEL E. HARRIS
Villanelle for the Dead White Fathers

SEAMUS HEANEY
Villanelle for an Anniversary

ANTHONY HECHT
Prospects

MATTHEW HITTINGER
The Astronomer on Misnomers

RICHARD HOFFMAN
Villanelle

JOHN HOLLANDER
By the Sound

PAUL HOOVER
Sonnet 56: Villanelle

KENNETH HYAM
On a Photograph by Philip Jones Griffiths

KATIE JENKINS
Raise a Drink

DONALD JUSTICE
In Memory of the Unknown
Poet, Robert Boardman Vaughn

JULIE KANE
Kissing the Bartender

MIMI KHALVATI
Villanelle

CAROLYN KIZER
On a Line from Valéry

JEE LEONG KOH
Novenary with Hens

STEVE KOWIT
The Grammar Lesson

ALEKSANDRA LANE
Knife

URSULA K. LE GUIN
Extinction

SHARMAGNE LELAND-ST. JOHN
For as Long as the Rivers Flow

KATE LIGHT
After the Season

TIMOTHY LIU
In Hot Pursuit

WILLIAM LOGAN
Lying in Bed

THOMAS LUX
On Visiting Herbert Hoover’s Birth and
Burial Place

AUSTIN MACRAE
Mowing

MARIE-ELIZABETH MALI
Campaign Season

TAYLOR MALI
The Basic Paradox

RANDALL MANN
Complaint of the Regular

CHARLES MARTIN
Terminal Colloquy

JAMES MERRILL
The World and the Child

PATRICIA MONAGHAN
Confiteor: A Country Song

LENARD D. MOORE
Meditation: The Poet Worries a Line

MARILYN NELSON
Daughters, 1900

KATE NORTHROP
The Place Above the River

MEDI LEWIS OBADIKE
Eschew and Languish

GREGORY ORR
Wild Heart

BARBARA J. ORTON
The Student

KATHLEEN OSSIP
The Mexican Quilt

ALICIA OSTRIKER
Another Story, Another Song

MOLLY PEACOCK
Little Miracle

ALISON PELEGRIN
The Zydeco Tablet

CRAIG SANTOS PEREZ
Villanelle

MARIE PONSOT
Northampton Style

KHADIJAH QUEEN
Inglewood Sunday, 1986

TAD RICHARDS
Used by Permission

ANDREW RIHN
Villanelle in the Voice of Richard Nixon

LOIS ROMA-DEELEY
Sugar Baby Fixing

J. ALLYN ROSSER
Sugar Dada

CAROL RUMENS
A Case of Deprivation

MICHAEL RYAN
Milk the Mouse

MARY JO SALTER
School Pictures

MICHAEL SCHMIDT
Understaffed Villanelle

ROBERT SCHULTZ
The Chankiri Tree

DAVID SHAPIRO
Drawing After Summer

DAN SKWIRE
Voice Mail Villanelle

PATRICIA SMITH
XXXL Villanelle

TRACY K. SMITH
Solstice

WILLIAM JAY SMITH
Villanelle

W.D. SNODGRASS
Mutability

SUSAN S. A. SOMER-WILLETT
Oppenheimer’s Lament

KATE SONTAG
Stepmother-of-Vinegar

A.E. STALLINGS
Burned

GEORGE SZIRTES
Henryk Ross: Children of the Ghetto

MARILYN L. TAYLOR
Subject to Change

TONY TRIGILIO
Marina and Lee

DAVID TRINIDAD
Chatty Cathy Villanelle

QUINCY TROUPE
Song

TIM UPPERTON
How Far We Went

LYRAE VAN CLIEF-STEFANON
Hum

DAVID WAGONER
Canticle for Xmas Eve

KEN WALDMAN
I Jokes

RONALD WALLACE
Nightline: An Interview with the General

GAIL WHITE
Partying with the Intelligentsia

CAROLYN BEARD WHITLOW
Rockin’ a Man, Stone Blind

C.K WILLIAMS
Villanelle of the Suicide’s Mother

SIMON WILLIAMS
Louie Spray and the 69lb Muskie

VILLANELLES ABOUT VILLANELLES

TONY BARNSTONE
Mexican Movie, 1939

GRACE BAUER
For Her Villain

KATE BERNADETTE BENEDICT
Rienelle

CHARLES BERNSTEIN
Sad Boy’s Sad Boy

GAVIN EWART
Villanelle

ANITA GALLERA
One Fart

NOAH ELI GORDON
A Midnight Villanelle

JOHN HOLLANDER
Villanelle

JANET R. KIRCHHEIMER
Experts Say

MIRIAM N. KOTZIN
Villanelle Villainess

SUSAN McLEAN
Post-Parting: A Villanizio

ROBERT SCHECHTER
The Crossing

SANDY SHREVE
Change

LISA VIHOS
The Body of My Words

VARIATIONS ON THE VILLANELLE

DERICK BURLESON
Waking Again

GABRIELLE CALVOCORESSI
Conversation Theory with Canyon

HAYDEN CARRUTH
Saturday at the Border

BRENDAN CONSTANTINE
Cold Reading

WESLI COURT (LEWIS TURCO)
Terzanelle in Thunderweather

SADIQA DE MEIJER
Neonatal

LATASHA N. NEVADA DIGGS
the originator

RITA DOVE
Black Billy Waters, at His Pitch

DANNA EPHLAND
Flight

CHARLES FORT
To a Young Child Waking

KIMIKO HAHN
Impunity

SEAN HILL
Distance Between Desires

MAXINE KUMIN
The Nuns of Childhood: Two Views

DENISE LEVERTOV
Obsessions

KIM LOCKWOOD
Stasis

KAMILAH AISHA MOON
Her Poem Stuns Mine
Into Holding Its Head

PAUL MULDOON
Milkweed and Monarch

CAROL MUSKE-DUKES
Little L.A. Villanelle

AIMEE NEZHUKUMATATHIL
Last Aerogramme to You, with Lizard

BRUCE PRATT
A Quarrel of Crows: A Villahaikunelle

JOSÉ EDMUNDO OCAMPO REYES
Villa, nelle

ALBERTO RÍOS
La Sequía/The Drought

TIM SEIBLES
Kiss My Villanelle

EVIE SHOCKLEY
go tell it to the mountain

JON SNIDER
Touch

GILBERT SORRENTINO
Untitled

MARK STRAND
Two de Chiricos

KAREN SWENSON
I Have Lost the Address of My Country

DAVI WALDERS
Between Queen and Queen-to-Be

ANNE WALDMAN
The Lie

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