Trying My Hand At A Villanelle

Villanelle: A form of poetry featuring five tercets and a quartet, with an alternating rhyme scheme and a pair of repeating lines scattered throughout. To be honest, I’m not normally the type to spring for structured poetry. I tend to write very freeform poetry, if it can even be called that after a while.

But every once in a blue moon, my attention is caught by a particular turn of phrase and my brain is turned on to a new way to write poetry. In this case, I became fixated on the poem Mad Girl’s Love Song by Sylvia Plath, which we read in English last year. And Mad Girl’s Love Song happens to be a villanelle.

Then, after I learned that Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night by Dylan Thomas (who was born on the same day as Plath, just about 17 years earlier) is also a villanelle, I had to try my hand at it. Here’s one villanelle which I came up with. Enjoy!

Higher Ground

I take to you like water takes to stone

I soak my soul; I crash against the coast

My brain aflame, my lungs like brittle bone

A foliage of daisies overgrown

They catch me, gently swaying at the post

I take to you like water takes to stone

The sun beats down, the clouds a taunting cone

Was there a time I didn’t know your name?

My brain aflame, my lungs like brittle bone

My mother warns you’ll try to take my throne

But I’ve become accustomed to this game

I take to you like water takes to stone

And then I find a different seed has sown

Itself inside my heart and made its claim

My brain aflame, my lungs like brittle bone

I think were you to leave I’d walk alone

But every time I turned I’d see your ghost

I take to you like water takes to stone

My brain aflame, my lungs like brittle bone

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