Random House/Everymans Library, 2012
Coedited with Marie-Elizabeth Mali
Chosen 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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