Formalist Friday: The Villanelle

In this day and age, poetic form gets a bad rap. Somewhere along the line, free verse poems became considered modern poetry, and everything else kind of fell by the literary wayside. Sonnets are for Shakespeare, rhymes are for kids, and when was the last time anyone cared about a trochee, anyway?

Free verse poems are great, but I’ve always been drawn to fixed form poetry. So today, I thought I’d share one of my favorite forms with you. (Yes, hello, it’s me: the annoying girl in your English class who raises her hand to talk about the significance of enjambment).

Here, have a villanelle done by a master. This is “Mad Girl’s Love Song” by Sylvia Plath:

"I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan's men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you'd return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)"

Haunting, right? Part of the reason this poem works so well is its form. See the way she repeats some of the lines throughout the poem? This is traditionally represented as:

A1 b A2 / a b A1 / a b A2 / a b A1 / a b A2 / a b A1 A2

A1 and A2 are those repeated lines. Lower-case a and b are for rhyme scheme. Her “a” lines rhyme on “dead, head, red” and her “b” lines on “again, in, men”. This interlocking of rhyme scheme and repetition makes a villanelle easy to spot.

Other examples of villanelles you may know include “Do not go gentle into that good night” by Dylan Thomas and “If I Could Tell You” by W. H. Auden.

Forms make you think about words in a different way. When you have limited mobility in one dimension, you have to get creative with the others. In the case of the villanelle, what’s limited is how many different lines and rhymes you have to work with. What’s not limited? Subject matter, meter, voice...the list goes on. Using forms is a great writing exercise because it forces you outside your comfort zone.

Here’s a challenge for you: try writing a villanelle. Plath wrote “Mad Girl’s Love Song” in college, after all, so why not give it a go? It doesn’t have to be your favorite thing you’ve ever written, but I guarantee you’ll be surprised by what you come up with.

​Written by Megan G.