VILLANELLE: FORM OF THE WEEK

The highly structured villanelle is a nineteen-line poem with two repeating rhymes and two refrains.
The form is made up of five tercets followed by a quatrain.
The first and third lines of the first stanza repeating alternately in the following stanzas. These two refrain lines form the final couplet in the quatrain.


Example

Newness of Life
by Shadow Hamilton


In Spring young thoughts turn to fancy
life around us is renewed
ladies wearing gowns all chintzy

Do entice men with a curtsey
careful least it's a wedding bed
in Spring young thoughts turn to fancy

Now the ladies, a few doxy's
love to spin, their skirts all spread
Ladies wearing gowns all chintzy

Love comes courting in ecstasy
the fashion this year is redheads
in Spring young thoughts turn to fancy

The ladies are so full of moxie
lead men on but no maidenhead
ladies wearing gowns all chintzy

Fluttering eyelids so saucy
men their passions this time unfed
in Spring young thoughts turn to fancy
ladies wearing gowns all chintzy

Another example

One Art
BY ELIZABETH BISHOP

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.