The Villanelle a highly structured form of poetry. Nineteen-lines, arranged in five tercets and a quatrain. Two rhymes are repeated throughout. The first and third lines of the opening tercet recur alternately at the end of the other tercets and with both repeated at the end of the final quatrain. Here’s one I attempted, with apologies to Walt Whitman.
No Song of Myself
This is no song of myself; I have nothing to say
It’s you not me: this verse is set free
Meanings might change, but images stay.
Keep what you like; let the rest float away
Brown field? Blue lake? Black bird? Oak tree?
This is no song of myself; I have nothing to say.
I could praise the boy on the tractor, the freshly mown hay
I can praise what I like, you don’t have to agree
Meanings might change, but images stay.
Lie in a hammock, let the breeze hold sway
It takes two to make a poem—you, me.
This is no song of myself; I have nothing to say.
These words are dead until read, some day
And the nightingale flies beyond the sea.
This is no song of myself; I have nothing to say.
Meanings might change, but images stay.
