Villanelle, Work in Progress
I should have known better than to fall,
To climb that cliff you’d toss me down.
I am so small, I am so small.
Your chill makes my skin crawl
Away from your eyes, your seas that drown.
I should have known better than to fall.
I’d been looking down at clouds, towns, and all,
Ruling heaven until you took back my crown.
I am so small, I am so small.
Laying together in a state of bliss, I felt so tall.
“I like your lips.” Do you like them in this frown?
I should have known better than to fall.
My eyes and mind were blind, overall,
To have thought we could keep this town.
I am so small, I am so small.
I feel like a mustang. I will buck, I will stall.
This isn’t me, this plastic. I am natural and brown.
I should have known better than to fall.
I am so small, I am so small.
Comments
Ah, villanelle! You’re ambitious! I can’t decide which is harder, one of these or a sestina, but both took me forever to write!! Love yours! It feels finished to me!
:D Thank you SO much! I really appreciate your comment. I haven’t tried a sestina yet, but I’m sure I will at some point. (: Again, thank yoouuu!
– Kaiya Knox
Ah, a villanelle’s the larger challenge! It took me less than two hours to write my first sestina, yet a whole day to come up with a decent villanelle. I think it was harder to match other stanza’s up with an entire line and then make those two repeating lines drive the point home in the end. It was the difference between doing a jigsaw puzzle and a sudoku puzzle.
I really like the message you’ve painted with this. The imagery is so relatable. Well done. The only improvement I could see is making the whole thing into iambic pentameter. This is what separates an actual formal poem from free verse. And allow me to add: working on learning the basics of formal poetry has taken my own writing into a whole other universe ;). I’d love to sit down with you and walk you through a few lines. You know how to find me.
I never actually learned how to write a villanelle, I just…found one in our literature book at school and loved the form. It was something new and confusing, but totally worth the experience in the end. I have since moved on to Shakespearean sonnets (which I actually got to learn how to do first! YAY!). Let me just say, Shakespearean sonnets are the most fun to write when it comes to formal poetry. I loved every second of it.
I finally learned about iambic pentameter, by the way! And it was only about a month or so after I wrote this villanelle, so the timing was a bit off-base, but…nonetheless… I’ve learned! And I definitely get what you mean about it taking poetry into a whole other universe. I’ve written two slam pieces recently (which I think is a mixture of formal and free verse, in a way), and I’d love to go over those with you sometime, actually. I’ll “bubblemail” my email to you. :D
– Kaiya Knox