Ode

Originated by Sappho and defined by Pindar and Horace, the lengthy, lyrical ode features elaborate stanza structures and stateliness in tone and style.

For nearly three millennia, the ode has been one of the most elaborate and dignified poetic expressions ever developed. Originally created to provide choral accompaniment to musical instruments, the ode evolved into a lyric poem that praised and glorified individuals, accomplishments, and victories, while also painting observant portraits of nature.

The ode was patterned after the movements of the chorus in Greek drama. Rhyme: Varied Structure: Unfixed number of four- to six-line stanzas Measure/Beat: Varied, but iambic tetrameter is most common Common Themes:

Pindaric celebrates gods, events, experiences, other individuals; Horatian is deeply personal

Other Notes:

A stately, elaborate, and dignified treatment of a subject

Originally created by Greeks to provide choral accompaniment

Originally structured in three acts: strophe (one side of story), antistrophe (other side of story), and epode (review)

The Exalted Ode

Greek beginnings.

The ode was developed for choral accompaniments and individual singers. Patterned after the movements of the chorus in Greek drama, the ode was set up in three acts: the strophe, the antistrophe, and the epode. The strophe told one side of a story, while the antistrophe conveyed its counterpart. The epode, constructed with a different metrical pattern, recounted the adventure.

Poets quickly discovered that the ode was an ideal vehicle for their more inspired works. Two Greeks stood head and shoulders above the other poets of their time: Pindar, the Greek civilization’s greatest lyric poet, whose 45 surviving victory odes reverberated through time and formed the foundation of English ode writing; and Sappho, who mastered the single-voice ode and gave it a distinct feminine touch. "I had learnt by heart completely all the songs, breathing of love, which sweetest Sappho sang,"

wrote fourth century B.C. poet Athenaeus, alluding to her prolific output. Alcaeus and Anacreon also wrote beautiful single-voice odes, while at the same time shaping the structure into several other lyrical forms.

Pindar’s victory odes formed the foundation of English ode writing.

Although little of Sappho’s work has survived, fragments of this poem were recently

discovered and are displayed at the Altes Museum.

Horace and others turned the ode into highly personalized, spoke-word poetry. (Alfred Elmore, A Greek Ode)

From choral to the spoken word.

The single-voice style became a favorite of the Romans, but Gaius Valerius Catullus, Horace, Juvenal, Ovid and others dispatched with the music and turned the ode into highly personalized spoken-word poetry. Catullus’ pining odes of unrequited yet celebrated love for his secret amor, the wife of a Roman senator, are among the most painfully romantic works in ancient literature.

Of the group, Horace’s particular style withstood the test of time; the Horatian Ode joined the Pindaric Ode as root structures for future incarnations of the form.

That future arrived with a flourish in the Renaissance, when several Italian poets and 16th century Frenchman Pierre de Ronsard revived both Homeric and Pindaric structures but made the pieces strictly spoken-word. The ode’s basis as a musical form was relegated to antiquity. In the 16th century, Sir Edmund Spenser introduced the Horatian Ode to the blossoming English poetry scene with a pair of marriage hymns, "Epithamalion" and "Prothamalion."

The ode’s resurgence.

Because the Elizabethan poets and dramatists brought elaborate lyric poetry into the popular culture, England experienced an ode boom in the 17th and 18th centuries. Ben Jonson, Andrew Marvell, and John Milton found the form ideal for their blends of life observation and religious devotion. A contemporary, Abraham Cowley, devised a third ode form when he couldn’t master the Horatian or Pindaric structure. Cowley’s form, which used stanzas of varying length and meter, greatly influenced an 18th century revival through the works of John Dryden, Alexander Pope, and unsung lyrical poetry master William Collins.

Abraham Cowley devised a third ode form when he couldn’t master the Horacian or Pindaric structure.

John Keats composed a series of masterful odes.

As with other poetic forms, the Romantic poets mastered and elevated odes. In his brief 26 years, John Keats composed two of the world’s most famous poems, "Ode to a Nightingale" and "Ode on a Grecian Urn." Arguably, Keats’ successors realized they couldn’t top his genius, and the ode faded until English poet W.H. Auden and American Allen Tate revived it in the early 20th century.

The ultimate celebration.

While Western poetry is home to many lyrical forms, the ode will forever retain a spot atop the throne of poesy. It is, quite simply, the most expressive and elaborate poem of celebration derived from a Western culture – a fact its creators, the early Greeks, knew better than any.

Withstanding The Test Of Time

Pindaric and Horatian styles.

Two ode structures emerged from antiquity: the Pindaric Ode and Horatian Ode. Both operated on multiple quatrain stanzas, but the Pindaric Ode tended to offer sweeping celebrations of events, gods, or other individuals, while the Horatian Ode was deeply personal. Two examples illustrate how the classic Pindaric style (Sappho) truncates the fourth line, while the Horatian style (Horace) cuts the third line, then offers a full fourth line.

Ode to AphroditeSappho (c. 630-570 B.C.)

Deathless Aphrodite, throned in flowers,

Daughter of Zeus, O terrible enchantress,With this sorrow, with this anguish, break my spiritLady, not longer!

Hear anew the voice! O hear and listen!

Come, as in that island dawn thou camest,Billowing in thy yoked car to SapphoForth from thy father's

Golden house in pity! ... I remember:

Fleet and fair thy sparrows drew thee, beatingFast their wings above the dusky harvests,Down the pale heavens,

Lightning anon! And thou, O blest and brightest,

Smiling with immortal eyelids, asked me:"Maiden, what betideth thee? Or whereforeCallest upon me?

"What is here the longing more than other,

Here in this mad heart? And who the lovelyOne beloved that wouldst lure to loving?Sappho, who wrongs thee?

"See, if now she flies, she soon must follow;

The Ship of State (Odes I, 14)Quintus Horatius Flaccus (Horace) (65-8 B.C.)

On Ship! New billows sweep thee out

Seaward. What wilt thou? Hold the port, be stoutSee'st not thy mastHow rent by stiff Southwestern blast?

Thy side, of rowers how forlorn?

Thine hull, with groaning yards, with rigging torn,Can ill sustainThe fierce, and ever fiercer main;

Thy gods, no more than sails entire,

From whom yet once they need might aid require,Oh Pontic Pine,The first of woodland stocks is thine.

Yet race and name are but as dust,

Not painted sterns gave storm-tost seamen trust;Unless thou dareTo be the sport of storms, beware.

O fold at best a weary weight,

A yearning care and constant strain of late,O shun the seasThat girt those glittering Cyclades

Yes, if spurning gifts, she soon must offer;Yes, if loving not, she soon must love thee,Howso unwilling..."

Come again to me! O now! Release me!

End the great pang! And all my heart desirethNow of fulfillment, fulfill! O Aphrodite,Fight by my shoulder!

Classic but flexible.

French poet Pierre de Ronsard was a key ode revivalist. He took the classic Pindaric story structure of strophe-antistrophe-epode and then added a closing couplet to each quatrain to form sestet stanzas with ababcc rhyme schemes:

To His Young MistressPierre de Ronsard (1524-85)

Fair flower of fifteen springs, that still

Art scarcely blossomed from the bud,Yet hast such store of evil will,A heart so full of hardihood,Seeking to hide in friendly wiseThe mischief of your mocking eyes.

If you have pity, child, give o'er,

Give back the heart you stole from me,Pirate, setting so little storeOn this your captive from Love’s sea,Holding his misery for gain,And making pleasure of his pain.

Another, not so fair of face,

But far more pitiful than you,Would take my heart, if of his grace,My heart would give her of Love’s due;And she shall have it, since I findThat you are cruel and unkind.

 

Meeting the needs of the ages.

Part of the ode’s history is the latitude that poets exercised to continually reshape the form to meet their needs. Sir Edmund Spenser and Ben Jonson carried the ode tradition into English literature, with Spenser bringing the Horatian Ode into vogue in the late 16th century and Jonson following some years later with the Pindaric form. Jonson also established a style of rhyming couplets in his stanzas, which was picked up by Alexander Pope, who included an echo from the ode’s earliest days: a chorus line.

From Ode to Sir Lucius Gray and Sir H. MorisonBen Jonson (1572-1637)

It is not growing like a tree

In bulk, doth make man better be;Or standing long an Oak, three hundred year,To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sear.A Lily of a dayIs fairer far, in MayAlthough it fall and die that night;It was the plant and flower of light.In small proportions we just beauties see;And in short measure, life may perfect be.

From Alexander’s FeastJohn Dryden (1631-1700)

Twas at the royal feast, for Persia won

By Philip’s warlike son:Aloft in awful stateThe godlike hero sateOn his imperial throne:His valiant peers were placed around;Their brows with roses and with myrtles bound(So should desert in arms be crowned).The lovely Thais, by his side,Sate like a blooming Eastern brideIn flower of youth and beauty’s pride.Happy, happy, happy pair!None but the brave,None but the brave,None but the brave deserves the fair.

Chorus

Happy, happy, happy pair!None but the brave,None but the brave,None but the brave deserves the fair.

Elevation by Romanticists.

When the Romantic poets wrapped their creative, intellectually astute, and historically inclined minds around the ode, the form received its greatest treatment since Gaius Valerius Catullus and Horatio made the ode personal. One of the greatest poems in the English language was written by John Keats.

From Ode to a NightingaleJohn Keats (1795-1821)

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains

My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains

One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:'Tis not through envy of the happy lot,But being too happy in thy happiness,–That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,In some melodious plotOf beechen green, and shadows numberless,Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

O for a draught of vintage, that hath been

Cooled a long age in the deep-delved earth,Tasting of Flora and the country green,Dance, and Provencal song, and sun-burnt mirth!O for a beaker full of the warm South,Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,And purple-stained mouth;That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,And with thee fade away into the forest dim:

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget

What thou among the leaves hast never known,The weariness, the fever, and the fretHere, where men sit and hear each other groan;Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;Where but to think is to be full of sorrowAnd leaden-eyed despairs;Where beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,Or new love pine at them beyond tomorrow.

An Ode To Celebration

Freedom to create.

The beauty of writing odes is that you’re not constrained by a fixed stanza length, metrical scheme, or rhyme scheme. The key to success is stanza organization and the consistency of metrical and rhyme patterns.

Celebrate the form.

Your poem should be a celebration – of a person, an event, an achievement, a relationship, an animal, an ordinary object, or simply the day. Once you’ve selected a topic, choose which of the

two classic structures with which you will work. The Pindaric Ode – the public celebration form – uses a three-stanza structure repeated throughout the poem (strophe-antistrophe-epode), with the strophe and antistrophe using identical meter and rhyme patterns. Stanzas can be as short as four lines or as long as thirty; the goal is to present the celebration in a lyrically smooth manner that focuses on the content, not the structure.

The easier of the two forms is the Horatian Ode, or the personal form. You can literally create your own stanza, meter, and rhyme pattern. You don’t have to rotate between strophe-antistrophe-epode, as in the Pindaric Ode, but you must repeat the stanza structure you create for every succeeding stanza.

Consider length and mirroring.

When writing, be sure that your lines rhyme with at least one other line per stanza. Also, try to write a minimum of four stanzas. Short odes are exceedingly rare; the vast majority are at least five stanzas. Depending on how you rhyme, line lengths do not need to be consistent, but whatever length you choose for one stanza must be mirrored in successive stanzas.

Shelley’s Horatian Ode.

Percy Bysshe Shelley opened his masterpiece, "Ode to the West Wind," which celebrates the crisp drying winds of autumn’s harvest season, in this way:

O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being,Thou from whose unseen presence the leaves deadAre driven like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,Pestilence-striken multitudes! O thouWho chariotest to their dark wintry bedThe winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,Each like a corpse within its grave, untilThine azure sister of the Spring shall blowHer clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)With living hues and odors plain and hill:Wild Spirit which art moving everywhere;Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh hear!

This is an Horatian Ode construct. Shelley developed a stanza length, rhyme scheme, and meter that he carried through this stanza and the four that followed. He ended each of the first three stanzas with the proclamation, "Oh hear!"

Tap into your emotion.

Shelley’s content describes the coldness and harshness the west wind brings in its heralding of the dark winter months, but it also celebrates the wild spirit that accompanies the changing of

seasons. He has chosen a subject of universal familiarity, driven to its most essential element – change – and sung his praises to the high heavens. Find a subject that brings out similar emotion in you, and give this magical brand of poetry a try!

Tercet

The tercet is a three-line stanza, often rhyming, that constitutes the core of a variety of poetic expressions, including terza rima, sonnets, odes, cantos, and villanelles.

The tercet gives poets plenty of fuel to write poems of varying lengths in three-line measures. From its genesis in medieval Italy, the tercet has also evolved to become an integral component of blank verse and free verse. Embedding the tercet into a longer work serves to add a simple but masterful musicality.

While credit for the tercet is the subject of debate, Dante was the progenitor of its first cousin, terza rima. Rhyme: Varied, but usually aba, moving to further stanzas – aba-bcb-cdc, etc. Structure: Three-line stanzas Measure/Beat: Iambic tetrameter or iambic pentameter Common Themes:

Love, journey, loss, life issues

Other Notes:

Can be used to write any type of poem

Serves as structure of terza rima, sonnets, odes, cantos, blank verse and free verse. The rhyme scheme varies (or is deemed unnecessary) depending on the type of poem the tercet serves.

Not necessary to end sentences before breaking to a new stanzaThe Rhyming Tercet

Dante’s terza rima.

While credit for the tercet is the subject of debate, Dante Alighieri was the progenitor of its first cousin, terza rima. Dante created terza rima as his measure of choice for The Divine Comedy. Terza rima interlocked tercets in each canto by rhyming the second line of one stanza with the first and third lines of its succeeding stanza – aba-bcb-cdc, and so forth. The pattern continued until the canto ended with a quatrain set in a wxyx rhyme scheme, as evidenced by the final seven lines of "The Inferno":

Ed io a lui: Poeta, io ti richieggioPer quello Dio che tu non cognosceti,Acciocch'io fugga questo male e peggio

Che tu mi meni la dov'or dicesti,

Si ch'io vegga la porta di san Pietro,E color cui tu fai cotanto mesti.Allor si mosse, ed io li tenni retro.</

Dante created terza rima for The Divine Comedy.

Robert Browning was among the most recent poets to include terza rima in their bodies of

work. Following Dante, Italian poets such as Francesco Petrarch and Giovanni Boccaccio made regular use of terza rima, as did French poets of the era, most notably Theophile Gautier. English poets, however, found the form difficult to use in their language because of fewer end-rhyming words; thus, it never fully set sail from Italy. Geoffrey Chaucer worked with terza rima in "A Complaint to a Lady," and Sir Thomas Wyatt used it regularly. More recently, Robert Browning, Lord Byron, and Percy Bysshe Shelley included terza rima in their bodies of work, as exemplified by Shelley’s "Ode to the West Wind" terza rima sonnet.

From sonnets to free verse.

Because terza rima is difficult to write, it was modified into the simpler tercet, which spread across the Western world. Sonnet writers, particularly John Milton, Sir Edmund Spenser, and

their followers, combined two tercets to make the six-line sestet that concluded their sonnets. Others modified the form into triplets, modifying all three lines. Many modern and present day poets have added a free verse approach by sprinkling rhyme schemes throughout lengthy strings of tercets, or dispatching them entirely.

From Obscurity To Renown

Dante’s influence.

Over the past eight centuries in Europe, and before that in Persia and the Orient, the tercet has been applied to a wide variety of poems. The tercet was obscure, even among poets, until Dante Alighieri interlinked tercets to form terza rima in The Divine Comedy. From there, the tercet’s musicality and usefulness grew in popularity. Since terza rima launched the tercet into European poetic discourse, the work of Sir Thomas Wyatt (better known as the first to employ the Italian sonnet form in English poetry) provides an English-language example in "Second Satire."

From Second SatireSir Thomas Wyatt (1503-42)

My mother’s maids, when they did sew and spin,

They sang sometimes a song of the field mouse,That for because their livelihood was but so thin

Would needs go seek her townish sister’s house.

She thought herself endured to much pain:The stormy blasts her cave so sore did souse...

 

A later 16th century poet, Nicholas Breton, demonstrated the tercet’s flexibility as a triplet, as well as the beautiful musicality of the form: Country SongNicholas Breton (1545-1626)

Shall we go dance the hay, the hay?

Never pipe could ever playBetter shepherd’s roundelay.

Shall we go sing the song, the song?

Never Love did ever wrong,Fair maids, hold hands all along.

 

Shall we go learn to woo, to woo?

Never thought ever came to,Better deed could better do.

Shall we go learn to kiss, to kiss?

Never heart could ever missComfort, where true meaning is.

Thus at base they run, they run.

When the sport was scarce begun.But I waked–and all was done.

The Romantic poets.

Among the English Romantic poets, Alfred Lord Tennyson often worked with tercets, as shown by these two examples:

The EagleAlfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-92)

He clasps the crag with crooked hands:

Close to the sun it lonely lands,Ringed with the azure world, it stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;

He watches from his mountain walls,And like a thunderbolt he falls.

From Two VoicesAlfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-92)

A still small voice spake unto me:

'Thou art so full of misery,Were it not better not to be?’

Then to the still small voice I said:

'Let me not cast in endless shadeWhat is so wonderfully made.’

Tercets for pacing.

More recently, tercets have appeared in varying rhyme schemes, or no rhyme schemes at all – an effect of free verse’s preference for natural language rhythms. However, many fine free verse and blank verse poets, as well as modern formalists, have found the three-line stanza structure ideal for pacing their poems. Two sterling examples of recently published tercet poems are Pulitzer Prize nominee Harvey Stanbrough’s "Reduced Circumstances" and Susan Mitchell’s "Dragonfly." Note the formalism of Stanbrough’s poem and the stop-and-go flight of Mitchell’s piece, which masterfully mimics the mannerisms of a dragonfly. Both illustrate the versatility of tercets.

Reduced Circumstances Dragonfly

Harvey Stanbrough (1954– )

He wasn’t always stretched that way, you know

strained through that fine sieve and powdered outinto polite society, a mote

in someone else’s eye. The guy trained hard,

compressed himself into the various moldsothers thought he’d fit. Nobody bothered

to show they cared–to try to add three days

back into his week or put Julyback into his year–they just smiled,

used him for their purposes, the last

of which was as the subject of some briefbut witty poem, and nobody knew

or wished to know the worst, most violent

effect: His circumstances were reduceduntil he merely sat with folded hands.

Susan Mitchell (1944-)

caught on the wing the wing is a

disarray of sun spotsovertaking

the air black dots on sheer on trans-

parency on wheel and wheeopenness so

surprising it rivals invincibility what

is magic to do pull itselfout of a hat

saw itself in two what a to-do

grabs hold of my fingerextended will

not to be shaken free together we are one

stem one spire one shoot upshotbent at a right

angle to itself so this is what it feels

to be reed a stem with wingsfor leaves a

finger that can see how the wind blows what

whir ungloves my breath what whistwhat wings two

sets can up can down can blow fast

forward faster re-verse how is

language to keep up how outwing

those wings their gulpsand gobbles of

ricochet at every bump is this

what the world is this rompthis dizziness a fast

roll of the dice four dots and three hundreds

bounced into life the samemorning bumbling

babies they stub their fantastic

engines on air on me notat all brainy

like a bow tied like a fancy gift done

up with organza like a spreea paint-the-town dotty

such extravagance such waste too soon

they stump to a standstill in puddles on hedges

tossed aside still brand new still shiny

the windup toy that will not wind amood run down

should i take back my delight delaminate

what wing was joy but oh my king-dom for the tip of a branch

Feel The Rhythm

Discover the basics.

There are many ways to build a tercet. To quickly become proficient in the tercet, use the classic Italian form brought into the English language by Sir Thomas Wyatt five centuries ago. If you can write four or more stanzas with an aba-bcb-cdc-ded rhyming pattern, you can write a tercet in any of its other structured or free forms. This rhyming scheme offers plenty of room for

movement and creativity but also requires deliberate word choice, especially end-line words, that can grow the poem.

When using the rhyme scheme of the terza rima, realize how well the interlocking rhymes tumble through the poem. Dante wrote an entire epic using this progressive rhyme scheme. While you probably shouldn’t detail your imaginative journey through hell as you familiarize yourself with this form, try creating your own short narrative using terza rima. You’ll quickly see how well the rhyme scheme pushes along the arc of your narrative.

This heartfelt phoenix that arose from the fires that devastated San Diego County in October 2007 demonstrates how the form can coax a poem along.

A Marriage Rises from the AshesRobert Yehling (1959– )

As fire scorches the farm, trees exploding in flame,

he remembers where they stood a week ago and looks to find fault, but how can you blame

the winds of hearts when a new direction blows

out of nowhere, the cold hard slap of penance striking his soul so hard, so suddenly he chose

to unlock the cold heart that gave you not romance

but cuts and scrapes and tears and belittlementsthat squashed your hopes and set you in trance

when a new love blazed inside you, new movement

speeding along, leaping toward consummation until this brushfire took away his trees, his barn, his past–heaven sent,

for him, because it brought you back, inspired

to rebuild him by the awakened love swirling in your heart: Now go rebuild him, precious one. Create new fire.

Poetry in motion.

Tercets live on rhythm. Be sure to capture the rhythm of your subject, and choose end-line words that give you options for later rhyming. This is especially crucial for the second line of each stanza, as the end-line word of this stanza will be rhymed with two end-line words of the next stanza. Then again, writing in terza rima (or in any verse structure, for that matter) should not be

a linear process. You may find yourself writing through the rhyme and then reversing to change an end-line word that appears two lines before.

Also keep this in mind: tercets tumble from stanza to stanza, and your content should tumble along with the lines. Avoid using the "to be" family of passive verbs as much as possible, especially since they suggest stasis. Form your language to reflect the continual movement of this form. Subjects can be romantic, tragic, pensive, elegiac, or reflective; in other words, the scope of the human heart.

Villanelle

The villanelle is a 19-line fixed form poem with repeating lines, composed in five tercets with a closing quatrain that ends in a rhyming couplet.

The villanelle is categorized as a modern classic form. It enjoyed a resurgence in the 20th century thanks to Oscar Wilde, Edwin Arlington Robinson, W.H. Auden, Sylvia Plath, Elizabeth Bishop, Theodore Roethke, Seamus Heaney, and others. One of the century’s most famous poems, "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night," by the legendary Dylan Thomas, is a villanelle. The villanelle also assumes a place of prominence in today’s great poetic forms thanks to another revival by Howard Nemerov and the New Formalist movement.

Dylan Thomas may have written the villanelle, "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night," in his cliff-top writing shed near Laugharne, Wales. Rhyme: aba-aba-aba-aba-aba-abaa Structure: 19 lines – five tercets and a closing quatrain; 6 to 11 syllables per line Measure/Beat: Iambic trimeter, tetrameter, or pentameter Common Themes:

Love, loss, and challenge

Other Notes: Nineteen lines combine repeating refrains, rhyme and cross-rhyme schemes

First and third lines of poem later form the closing couplet

Final line of the first tercet rhymes with the first line of the next stanza, forming a repetitive rhyme between the first and third lines of every stanza

The Exquisite Villanelle

Past scholars mistakenly cited the Italian villanella (country song) as the inception of the villanelle. (Italian School, The Rustic Concert, the Song)

Mistaken origins.

Prior to the 20th century, the complex 19-line villanelle form was rather obscure and subject to considerable misconceptions about its origin. Past scholars mistakenly cited the Italian villanella (country song) as the inception of villanelle. In truth, during the height of villanella popularity during the Renaissance, the term simply described Italian and Spanish folk songs with country or rustic themes and accompanying dances. Scholars now agree that only one true villanelle was written during the Renaissance: a poem by the same title, penned by Frenchman Jean Passerat.

The villanelle languished until 19th century author Theodore de Banville popularized the form.

Out of obscurity.

Because of the form’s complexity, the villanelle languished until 19th century author Theodore de Banville popularized the form. Once the flourishing poetry scene became aware of the villanelle, followers lined up to tackle the form and, in the process, created some of our finest English-language works. James Joyce even threw a villanelle into the text of his masterpiece, Portrait of An Artist As A Young Man. After a brief lull in the 1920s, William Empson revived the form in the 1930s, beginning the arc of its current popularity. An even more intricate expression is terzanella, which combines villanelle with the rhythm structure of terza rima.

Villanelle has been described as "exquisite torture, wrapped into 19 lines."

Exquisite torture.

The villanelle has been described by one anthology as "exquisite torture, wrapped into 19 lines." It’s easy to see why poets became obsessed with the form: a villanelle combines repeating refrain lines, rhyme and cross-rhyme schemes that can boggle the mind but also produce beautiful works. The 19 lines break down to five tercets and a closing quatrain. The first three lines of the poem serve as the driving force, with the first and third lines serving as alternate refrains to close the other four tercets. The two refrains join to finish the poem as a couplet. The final line of each tercet also rhymes with the first line of the following stanza, forming a repetitive rhyme. Villanelles can employ from six to 11 syllables per line; most modern villanelles run from eight to 11 syllables per line, carrying three to five measured beats.

Strong And Intense

Common elements.

Poets have used villanelles for a variety of subjects, but all good villanelles have two things in common. First, villanelles have strong opening tercets, with the first and third lines providing a two-barreled refrain. They also gradually build in tone and intensity from one stanza to the next. The works of Dylan Thomas, Edward Arlington Robinson, Sylvia Plath, and Elizabeth Bishop exemplify the villanelle form.

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good NightDylan Thomas (1914-1953)

Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,

Because their words had forked no lightning theyDo not go gentle into that good night,

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright

Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,

And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way, Do not go gentle into that good night,

One ArtElizabeth Bishop (1911-1979) The art of losing isn’t hard to master;so many things seem filled with the intentto 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.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight

Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,

Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.Do not go gentle into that good night,Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

The Home on the Hill Edward Arlington Robinson (1869-1935)

They are all gone away,

The house is shut and still,There is nothing more to say

Through broken walls and gray,

The wind blows bleak and shrill,They are all gone away

Nor is there one today,

To speak them good or illThere is nothing more to say

Why is it then we stray

Around the sunken sill?They are all gone away

And our poor fancy play

For them is wasted skill,There is nothing more to say

There is ruin and decay

In the House on the Hill:They are all gone away,

–Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture

I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evidentthe art of losing’s not too hard to masterthough it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

Mad Girl’s Love SongSylvia Plath (1932-1963)

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 darkness 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 enter 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).

There is nothing more to say.

Concise Storytelling

Elements of style.

While the villanelle’s repeating lines and constant rhyme scheme requires deftness in choosing an end-of-line word with a multiple rhyming syllable, its construction falls right into the lap of storytelling. Like stories, villanelles tend to have a beginning element (first tercet), development (second through fourth tercets) and resolution/conclusion (final quatrain). Thus, they feel rhythmic and musical to the spoken voice, and they build in momentum, intensity, and impact.

When beginning to compose your villanelle, spend extra time brainstorming and revising the two refrains. Because they’ll repeat several times throughout the poem, these lines will be your reader’s focus. The other content should work to alter the meaning of the refrains as they repeat throughout the piece. This will heighten your reader’s experience of the language – the material will remain, but the message will twist and change as the poem progresses.

Attention to detail.

A recent villanelle by New Formalist adherent Harvey Stanbrough (from his National Book Award-nominated collection, Beyond the Masks) illustrates the process of writing the form. Stanbrough’s poem, "Roses?", draws from his skill as an astute observer. When he teaches observation workshops, Stanbrough often sends students into a grove of trees. He instructs them to look at the bark and write about the shades, textures, and striations they see. If they write material like, "The bark is brown," he sends them back into the grove because he, the poet, sees countless shades of brown, as well as other colors.

This process of returning is similar to a reader’s experience with the villanelle. As the reader rediscovers the refrains as they repeat through the poem, he or she will learn something new about the poem and themselves. Pay special attention to how your refrains contort and change in this verse form.

Setting the tone.

To begin, Stanbrough sets up the poem by creating a fine rhyming couplet (the baseline couplet) that will become the alternating refrain lines. He then splits the couplet with a movement line, completing the opening tercet:

When pink and red entwine, their dreams to share and climb as one, combining strength and grace, then will the scents of roses fill the air.

He’s already characterized the two roses and their life mission: to grow as one. This metaphor for sacred relationship also shows the vital role of the first tercet in setting the tone for the villanelle. The sounds Stanbrough chose to serve as his two root rhymes (-air/-are and –ace) feed countless rhyming words, which is the villanelle writer’s goal. He has already made his job easier.

Every word counts.

Stanbrough begins his development phase by focusing on the pink rose, but then brings us back to the core theme by closing with each half of the baseline couplet. He provides succinct descriptions of the rose’s feminine attributes in just two lines and 20 syllables per stanza, then "sings" the refrain. Every word counts in villanelle.

The pink, its petals soft, its scent a rareand gentle one, will take its rightful place when pink and red entwine, their dreams to share.

Notice how Stanbrough adds to the sensation of this pink-red combination. Not only do we understand how the colors will work together, but we have this sense of smell that could heighten the experience. You almost have to wonder about the refrain, as well. Can we think of the dreams of these roses as their scents? Here’s the next stanza:

No longer will the wind easily parethe strengthened petals from the coral face;then will the scents of roses fill the air.

At this point in the villanelle writing process, poets should start to gain a realization of how well their refrains will repeat and work throughout the piece. Although you’ve already give your refrains a lot of thought prior to even beginning your poem, here’s an optimum place to pause and revise.

Building momentum.

Stanbrough proceeds to describe how the masculinity of the red rose will be softened and humbled by joining with the pink rose. The opening two lines of each stanza fuse so tightly with the bottom refrain line that each tercet could stand alone as a mini-poem. In addition, the poem builds through its rethinking and reconfiguration of the refrains:

The red, upon a stem that’s long and fair,will learn humility and grow in gracewhen red and pink entwine, their dreams to share.

No longer will pride outweigh the care

that ‘neath the sun, all have an equal place;then will the scents of roses fill the air,

Graceful closing.

Then the conclusion: how red and pink will grow as one, having fused their strengths and either shorn away or transformed their weaknesses. The final line is nothing less than the reward of a deep love as it touches those around the two roses.

and each of them, with petals strong and fair,will give and take with ease and grow in pacewhen red and pink entwine, their dreams to share, Then will the scents of roses fill the air.

Stanbrough closes the poem with complete smoothness and grace, not only showing sensitivity to his subject but also good craftsmanship. While being kept distant throughout the entirety of the poem, the two refrains come together (much like the two roses do). Just as the petals "will give and take with ease and grow and pace," these two refrains fuel the blooming of this villanelle.

So as you begin to construct your own villanelle, think about how you’re going to take advantage of this unique form. Stanbrough focuses his poem on two distinct roses coming together, and this reads as a perfect match for the eventual coming together of the two refrains of the villanelle. How are you going to match the content to the movement of the form?

Rondeau

The rondeau ("round") is a medieval formes fixe poem that features 15 lines with a set rhyme scheme, broken into three stanzas – quatrain, quintet, and sestet.

The rondeau is characterized by repeating lines of the refrain and the two rhyme sounds throughout. It derives from the rondel, which first appeared in the 12th century, and is related to the triolet and its popular descendant, the villanelle.

Rhyme: aabba-aabR-aabbaR Structure: 15 lines, three stanzas – quatrain, quintet, sestet Measure/Beat: Iambic tetrameter Common Themes:

Death, forlorn love, tributes, love

Other Notes:

The rentrement (refrain) begins the poem as its first line

Two rhymes dictate the poem

Abbreviated rentrement repeats as the final line of second and third stanzas

The Courtly Rondeau

The rondeau was part of the troubadour movement throughout Italy, Spain, and South France.

The medieval influence of the blues.

The rondeau’s structure was an early precursor to American blues music, with expatriates like Josephine Baker learning about the form in Paris. Together with the vivelai and the ballade (the ancestor of the ballad), the rondeau is one of the three formes fixe of medieval French poetry. It was also part of the troubadour movement that spread these forms, along with sestinas and cansos (predecessors of canzones and sonnets), throughout Northern Italy, Spain and Southern France.

The modern rondeau’s form is straightforward: 15 lines, eight to ten syllables each, divided into three stanzas – a quintet, a quatrain, and a sestet. The rentrement (or refrain) consists of the first few words or the entire first line of the first stanza, and it recurs as the last line of both the second and third stanzas. Two rhymes guide the rondeau.

From song to the spoken word.

Originally, the rondeau was a courtly musical style devoted to emotional subjects like spiritual worship, romance, and the changing of seasons. Rondeaux were sung and composed in four stanzas by its earliest champions, "hunchback poet" Adam de La Halle and composer Guillaume de Machaut. De Machaut was the world’s premier 14th century composer, but he also wrote 400 known poems that included 235 ballads and 76 rondeaux. Considered the last great poet to also compose, De Machaut’s influence extended across the English Channel and touched Geoffrey Chaucer, among others.

By the late 14th century, poets began to experiment with rondeaux as spoken-word literary vehicles. One, Christine di Pisan, broke from her usual verse about empowering women (Joan of Arc was a reader) to write a few rondeaux. She was also the first to curtail the refrain, simply abbreviating the repeating line for time’s sake:

Vous en pourriez exilherUn mi'lierDes amans par vodulzoeil,Plain d'esreil,Qui ont fait maint fretillierEt vellier.Je m'en sens plusquene sueilEt m'en dueil, &c.

Composer and poet Guillaume de Machaut was an early champion of the rondeau. (An allegorical scene in which Nature offers Machaut three of her children - Sense, Rhetoric, and Music, French miniature, 14th

century)

Francois Villon, the first "outlaw poet," turned the rondeau’s abbreviated refrain

into an art form. (Statue in Utrecht, Netherlands)

Abbreviated and extended.

During the height of the rondeau’s popularity as both a poem and song in the mid-15th century, vagabond poet Francois Villon turned the abbreviated refrain into an art form. The first known outlaw poet, Villon was a highly educated man who harbored extreme bitterness toward the elite and later became a thief before disappearing at age 32.

Meanwhile, copyists (scribes) saw that the partial final line also saved time in replicating poems for distribution; soon, people accepted the truncated second and third stanza end-lines as the poem’s natural structure and forgot about its original intent. That wasn’t the only change to the form. The rondeau simple (12 lines) became obsolete, and the rondeau double (21 lines) was shortened by Eustache Deschamps to 15 lines. Years later, another leading poet, Clement Marot, created the rondeau redouble (24 lines), but it was obsolete by 1520. Deschamps’ 15-line version survived as the form we know today.

Maurice Rollinat, a late-stage Romantic poet, wrote more than 100 rondeaux.

An elusive presence.

By 1525, the advent of lyrical poetry and the rise of sonnets and ballads spelled the end of the rondeau’s century-long popularity. It enjoyed a brief reprise later in the century, but fell into obscurity until, two centuries later, Theodore de Banville and the English Romantic poets rediscovered the form and created stronger rhyme schemes in the refrain, assimilating them into their poems. A late-stage Romantic poet, Maurice Rollinat (1846-1903), wrote more than 100 rondeaux. Other practitioners included Paul Lawrence Dunbar, the first celebrated African-American poet, who wrote the noteworthy "We Wear The Mask," and Canadian World War I army physician John McCrae, who in 1915 wrote the most famous rondeau, "In Flanders Fields."

Poetry In The Round

Renaissance hits.

The rondeau derived from two main sources: the rondel, a short repeating-line poem; and the rondeaux, courtly songs that, with their catchy rentrement (refrains), were akin to pop hits in 14th and 15th century France. The form’s colorful evolution begins with a pair of rondels that show the makings of a fixed repeating-line style:

UntitledAnonymous Woman Poet (12th century)

I walk in loneliness through the greenwood

for I have none to go with me.Since I have lost my friend by not being goodI walk in loneliness through the greenwood.I’ll send him word and make it understood

RondelCharles d'Orleans (1391-1465)

Strengthen, my Love, this castle of my heart,

And with some store of pleasure give me aid,For jealousy, with all them of his part,Strong siege about the weary tower has laid.Nay, if to break his bands thou art afraid,

that I will be good company.I walk in loneliness through the greenwoodfor I have none to go with me.

Too weak to make his cruel force depart,Strengthen at least this castle of my heart,And with some store of pleasure give me aid.Nay, let not jealousy, for all his artBe master, and the tower in ruin laid,That still, ah, Love, thy gracious rule obeyed.Advance, and give me succor of my part;Strengthen, my Love, this castle of my heart.

Literary roundeaux.

By the 14th century, poet-composer Guillame de Machaut, poet Christine di Pisan, and Parisian music school headmaster Jehan Valliant found large audiences with literary rondeaux. With his reach as the Western world’s foremost composer, de Machaut popularized the form. This Jehan Valliant poem illustrates both full-length refrain lines and the 15-line form we know today:

Listen, Everyone!Jehan Valliant (14th century)

Listen, everyone! I have lost my girl

For he who finds her, on my soulEven though she is fair and kindlyI give her up heartilyWithout raising a stink at all.

This girl knows her graces well

God knows, she loves and is loyalFor heaven’s sake, let him keep her secretlyListen, everyone! I have lost my girl

Look after her well, this pearl

Let no one hurt or wound herFor by heaven, this prettyIs sweetness itself to everybodyWoe is me! I cry to the worldListen, everyone! I have lost my girl

 

Format changes.

In the 15th century, three poets emerged to keep the rondeau’s popularity burning: outlaw poet Francois Villon, Eustache Deschamps, and Clement Marot. Villon’s rondeaux were interesting because they dealt not with love, spring, or the other lofty-heart subjects for which the form was best known,

but with bitterness, envy, death, loss, and revenge. Villon’s work illustrates a format change in the rondeau: truncated end-lines of the second and third stanzas.

Death I AppealFrancois Villon (c. 1431-1463)

Death I appeal your harshness

Having robbed me of my mistressYou remain unsatisfiedWaiting for me to languish, tooSince then I’ve had no strength or vigorBut in her life did she offend you?Death etc.

We were two, we had but one heart

Since it is dead then I must dieYes or live without lifeAs images do, by heartDeath etc.

 

Messages of the heart.

After its popularity waned in the early 16th century, the rondeau was practically obsolete. English poet Anthony Hamilton (1646-1720) tried to revive the form, but it wasn’t until 150 years later that the ever-studious Romanticists found in rondeau poems yet another way to convey messages of the heart. The form was revived, then a century later served to deliver two of the English language’s most famous poems, one by Paul Lawrence Dunbar and the other by John McCrae.

We Wear the MaskPaul Lawrence Dunbar (1872-1906)

We wear the mask that grins and lies,

It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,This debt we pay to human guile;With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,And mouth with myriad subtleties

Why should the world be over-wise

In counting all our tears and sighs?Nay, let them only see up, whileWe wear the mask

In Flanders FieldsJohn McCrae (1872-1918)

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on rowThat mark the place, and in the skyThe larks, still bravely singing, flyScarce heard amid the guns below

We are the dead; short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,Loved and were loved, and now we lieIn Flanders fields.

We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries

To thee from tortured souls arise.We sing, but oh the clay is vileBeneath our feet, and long the mile;But let the world dream otherwise,We wear the mask!

Take upon your quarrel with the foe!

To you from failing hands we throwThe torch; be yours to hold it high!If ye break faith with us who dieWe shall not sleep, though poppies growIn Flanders fields.

Time To Rhyme

Basic elements.

Like other repeating-line poems, such as triolet and the villanelle, the keys to writing a rondeau are to generate a dynamic, catchy opening line, part of which will serve as the end-lines for the second and third stanzas; and to end that opening line with a word that has many rhymes. The overall rhyme scheme is aabba-aabR-aabbaR. The form itself combines a quintet, a quatrain, and a sestet, with lines ranging from eight to ten syllables.

Strong rhyme scheme.

A good example of a modern rondeau is W.E. Henley’s "In Rotten Row." The main difference between modern and early rondeaux lies in the affinity for rhyming off the opening line. Medieval and Renaissance poets focused on the force of their lines, while English poets developed rhythm.

Henley opens with a catchy line – the eventual refrain – and establishes a strong aabb rhyme scheme in the opening quatrain. He also works with eight-syllable lines, the traditional French form. "In Rotten Row" is an excellent hybrid of classic French and modern English rondeau style.

In Rotten Row a cigaretteI sat and smoked, with no regretFor all the tumult that had been.The distances were still and green,

Paint the setting.

The opening rhyme scheme works through most of this quintet. Note the storytelling quality to the poem, and also how it rolls naturally into the truncated refrain – just three words from the opening line. Use the second stanza to paint the setting and background of your rondeau.

And streaked with shadows cool and wet.Two sweethearts on a bench were set,

Two birds among the bows were met;So love and song were heard and seenIn Rotten Row.

Use the form’s flexibility.

The pastoral scene of the second stanza shifts to more action in the final sestet, driving toward a conclusion, similar to the villanelle form. Also, in the third line, Henley uses nine syllables. The rondeau gives you the flexibility to work with eight to ten syllables per line. Try to be consistent in your syllable counts per line, but if you need an extra syllable to deliver an effective line, take it. Also remember that the rondeau is rhythmic, fluid, and strong, and like a good pop song, it has a catchy refrain.

A horse or two there was to fretThe soundless sand; but work and debt,Fair flowers and falling leaves between,While clocks are chiming clear and keen,A man may very well forgetIn Rotten Row.