Largely, the intended effect of the villanelle is to show a thought process as opposed to a narrative or a story; the poet's lines are repeated several times and they rhyme with only a few specific sounds. Of the three given, the villanelle that seems to embody this style (though not necessarily the very strict structure) the most is "One Art" by Elizabeth Bishop, a poem about losing things ranging from the door keys to "you," or an important person in the speaker's life. Bishop writes a tangled thought process that eventually leads to the root of her discomfort--the aforementioned loss of "you," someone important in her life. Up until then, she writes of losing keys, losing an hour, losing dreams, losing her mother's watch; the order of the otherwise random objects lends to the mood of the wandering villanelle, lacking a coherent arc.
While the other two poems follow the format of a villanelle somewhat better than does this one, "One Art" gives the reader a concept of a train of thought, drifting, it seems, over objects seen in the room or those that are the first to come to mind. The reader will inevitably be able to identify with the increasing amounts of loss, from everyday objects up to the difficult concept of lost dreams, as well as being able to understand the jumping of the mind to various subjects, all connected through the one common string of loss.
Tuesday, March 4, 2014
The Villanelle
One Art by Elizabeth Bishop
I enjoyed reading this poem because of its excellent use of the villanelle style and the subject is one that everyone can relate to and needs to understand. So many people today dwell in the past and hold grudges for the dumbest things, for instance; omg they subtweeted me, holy crap they said something mean about me to someone else. But who cares really, just get over it and move on because this isn't a disaster . Why do we care so much about all this stupid stuff because in a couple of houses from now, it won't hurt us. That is the main thing I got from this poem and that is to let go of the past and try not to let these petty losses in your life consume you to the point where you lose your mind. Elizabeth did a great job at keeping the villanelle style consistent throughout the poem, as well as having the content strong and prevalent for the readers, making it easier for them to relate and therefore understand the circumstances that are occurring in this poem. I can honestly say I enjoyed reading this poem because most pose I hate if they don't have a cheesy rhyme scheme that a three year old could make up.
I enjoyed reading this poem because of its excellent use of the villanelle style and the subject is one that everyone can relate to and needs to understand. So many people today dwell in the past and hold grudges for the dumbest things, for instance; omg they subtweeted me, holy crap they said something mean about me to someone else. But who cares really, just get over it and move on because this isn't a disaster . Why do we care so much about all this stupid stuff because in a couple of houses from now, it won't hurt us. That is the main thing I got from this poem and that is to let go of the past and try not to let these petty losses in your life consume you to the point where you lose your mind. Elizabeth did a great job at keeping the villanelle style consistent throughout the poem, as well as having the content strong and prevalent for the readers, making it easier for them to relate and therefore understand the circumstances that are occurring in this poem. I can honestly say I enjoyed reading this poem because most pose I hate if they don't have a cheesy rhyme scheme that a three year old could make up.
night sky
The link would not come up on my computer so I had to look on wikipedia for what a villanelle was. It said is was a 19 line poem consisting of five tercets and one quatrain. A villanelle also has two repeating rhymes and is generally pastoral. So with that description all of these poems fit the description of a villanelle. However, I think that “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night” by Dylan Thomas makes the best use of it. To me this poem seems the cleanest and the most music like of all the poems. I thought that the way the poem was split up matched perfectly to the change in scene and the quatrain did a perfect job of switching to the final words. Also I love the contrast of the night and light as alternate endings in each stanza I think it does a great job at taking the poem from good to great.
Milli Villanelle
After reviewing the style of the villanelle (a style so obscure that it merits red squigglies under its name) I have determined that while "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" by Dylan Thomas is most accurate in terms of villanelle style, Theodore Roethke's "The Waking" is the more effective form.
Roethke's poem is quite complex and draws on a series of paradoxes to get his point across. For instance, the first line says "I wake to sleep". What does he mean by that? Susan Pinkus asserts that sleep is "the state the poet must reach to awake and discover the acceptance" that eventually all of us will die. In the second stanza, Roethke says "I hear my being dance from ear to ear" as if his life is a happy dance, even though he knows that it will one day end. Roethke also writes "God bless the Ground" and "Great Nature has another thing to do", meaning that these other realms that we will visit when we perish offer another level of enlightenment. Roethke asserts that by "waking to sleep" and "learning by going where I have to go", we must all die in the end, but we should not be saddened by this because there are greater things in the after life. This makes life and death a circle, as created by the paradoxes. The continual use of paradoxes creates a circular nature in the poem itself. That coupled with the villanelle style of repetition makes the whole thing one big circle.
Roethke's "The Waking" uses paradoxes to create a circular motion to life and death that tells the audience to not be afraid of death, but to welcome it as another period of enlightenment. This makes a truly circular villanelle and lets it triumph over the other poems in terms of effectiveness.
Roethke's poem is quite complex and draws on a series of paradoxes to get his point across. For instance, the first line says "I wake to sleep". What does he mean by that? Susan Pinkus asserts that sleep is "the state the poet must reach to awake and discover the acceptance" that eventually all of us will die. In the second stanza, Roethke says "I hear my being dance from ear to ear" as if his life is a happy dance, even though he knows that it will one day end. Roethke also writes "God bless the Ground" and "Great Nature has another thing to do", meaning that these other realms that we will visit when we perish offer another level of enlightenment. Roethke asserts that by "waking to sleep" and "learning by going where I have to go", we must all die in the end, but we should not be saddened by this because there are greater things in the after life. This makes life and death a circle, as created by the paradoxes. The continual use of paradoxes creates a circular nature in the poem itself. That coupled with the villanelle style of repetition makes the whole thing one big circle.
Roethke's "The Waking" uses paradoxes to create a circular motion to life and death that tells the audience to not be afraid of death, but to welcome it as another period of enlightenment. This makes a truly circular villanelle and lets it triumph over the other poems in terms of effectiveness.
One Art
I'm trying not to let my opinions on each poem influence my decision on which uses the form the best, but alas, that is proving difficult. "Do Not go Gentle into that Good Night" seemed to use the villanelle as a very strict template, while the other two took more liberties in changing it up a bit. The form of the villanelle states that the "third line of the first stanza serves as the last line of the third and fifth stanzas." "Do Not go Gentle into that Good Night" does this exactly, while the other two switch the lines up each time, so that they use the same base words, but the meaning has changed slightly. To me, this seems to be the way that would use the form most creatively, if not at least effectively. It puts an interesting twist to a form that could become boring, as "Do Not go Gentle into that Good Night" did.
It may be because it was my favorite of the three, but I do think that "One Art" was the most effective with the villanelle form. There was a progression with the meaning of the poem by changing up the last lines of the third and fifth stanzas. It first changes to "None of these will bring disaster" in the third stanza, and then to "I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster" in the fifth. It was more refreshing to read for the audience to have a slightly different meaning each time. We hear from the speaker how she has learned not to miss things she's lost too terribly. These end lines tell the reader about this. She admits to us that she misses these things, but she will be alright. True to the villanelle form, it also blatantly speaks about loss, almost too obviously, but not quite. Elizabeth Bishop keeps a bit of subtlety to it somehow. Enough that it balances out. Enough that it makes it my favorite of the three.
The Villanelle
"Do not go gentle into that good night"
by Dylan Thomas
Through Thomas' diction with lines such as "old age should burn...at close of day" it can be inferred that this villanelle addresses the idea that death, although eminent, should not be easily accepted but fought. This theme is gracefully expounded upon through Thomas' choice to write his poem as a villanelle. The repetition of "rage, rage against the dying of the light" expresses the Thomas' belief that while it is helpless to avoid growing old, death should still attempt to be fought. With the repetition of "do not go gentle into that good night" Thomas is imbuing in his audience the idea that it is not honorable for a man to accept death quietly and since the poem is written as a villanelle, that particular phrase (the strongest and most dramatic) is repeated the most, most likely done on purpose. The use of villanelle served Thomas' poem in that it gave an opportunity for his imagery to stand out. In the last stanza, Thomas references his father thus evoking a more personal tone. It is as if Thomas is calling upon his father to put up a strong fight against death, that he "rage against the dying of the light" so that his memory remains even when he cannot. That is the essence of Thomas' villanelle - that one should work to preserve his life/dreams/ideas/beliefs so that he may be remembered by them and thus not fade quietly into death. He wants people to make an impact. And his choice to make this statement using a villanelle serves to strengthen his argument. The repetition encountered in the villanelle reinforces Thomas' main points and evokes imagery of life and death and the struggle between the two, and in preserving life when faced with death.
This Is How It Feels to Take a Fall
So Daedalus is this amazing inventor - he has a knack for building the most amazing things. When Daedalus realizes that his nephew, Talus, might be a better inventor than he is, he pushes him out the window and kills him - though according to the legend, people aren't sure if he died, or turned into a partridge on the way down. Either way, Daedalus had done A Bad Thing, so he flees from his home to live on Crete, where he strikes up a friendship with King Minos. Daedalus continues to build and invent things while he is there, including things for the royal family. One of these things that he built was a a cow suit so that the Queen could...well... have relations with a bull. These relations resulted in the horrifying half-man-half-bull creature known as the minotaur. King Minos then asks Daedalus to build a labyrinth in which to hide the bull-human thing, and every nine years the king sends seven young men and women into the maze as sacrifice to his step son the half bull thing.
(Is it just me or does King Minos take this entire situation incredibly well?)
Anyway, one of these heroes who gets sent out into the labyrinth is Perseus, who the king's daughter, Ariadne, was in love with. Because she didn't want him to die in the maze, she begged Daedalus for help in saving him. He then gave Theseus a ball of yarn with which to use to get back out of the maze. So Theseus kills the minotaur, uses the yarn to exit the maze, and then he and Ariadne escape Crete together. King Minos is outraged that Daedalus would help him, so he locks him and his son Icarus up so that they can never leave Crete. Daedalus the magnificent inventor uses twine, wax and feathers to build large wings for him and his son so that they can escape by air aka the only escape route Minos can't guard against. Before giving Icarus his wings he warns him that he has to fly at medium height - if he goes too low then the ocean water will dampen the wings, and if he goes too high then the heat from the sun will cause them to melt. With that warning, they both strap on their wings and take off, amazing the people of Crete with their godlike ability to fly. Icarus enjoys flying too much and gets too cocky and so ends up flying too high, and like his father had warned him, his wings melted and he plummeted into the sea. Daedalus had to fly on until he eventually lands in Sicily, where he mourns his son and builds a temple to Apollo.
One reason why I wanted to do this story was because I really like the song Icarus by Bastille, which takes the common approach of cockiness and how Icarus was sure he'd be fine, even though his father had warned him not to fly too high. Most of the song doesn't refer directly to the story of Icarus, but rather can be taken as talking about people taking unnecessary risks and generally just living with what seems to be reckless abandon. I won't pretend to know everything that the song is attempting to convey, but it does seem to address the idea of risk. Obedience, however, doesn't play as much of a role in it, mostly because when I think of the story I don't really think of it as being in regards to how Icarus was disobedient to his father - I think of it as him being so taken with his ability to fly that he thought that anything was possible. While there is disobedience, as he didn't heed his father's warnings, it was also just the childish thought that nothing could happen to him. He was flying high - quite literally - and the idea that anything bad could happen to him was far from his mind. So he wasn't really trying to disobey Daedalus - even if he did. This feeling is something that many people share, especially as teenagers. Bad things may happen, but we're on top of the world and the idea that our actions could have consequences is not something we think about.
(Is it just me or does King Minos take this entire situation incredibly well?)
Anyway, one of these heroes who gets sent out into the labyrinth is Perseus, who the king's daughter, Ariadne, was in love with. Because she didn't want him to die in the maze, she begged Daedalus for help in saving him. He then gave Theseus a ball of yarn with which to use to get back out of the maze. So Theseus kills the minotaur, uses the yarn to exit the maze, and then he and Ariadne escape Crete together. King Minos is outraged that Daedalus would help him, so he locks him and his son Icarus up so that they can never leave Crete. Daedalus the magnificent inventor uses twine, wax and feathers to build large wings for him and his son so that they can escape by air aka the only escape route Minos can't guard against. Before giving Icarus his wings he warns him that he has to fly at medium height - if he goes too low then the ocean water will dampen the wings, and if he goes too high then the heat from the sun will cause them to melt. With that warning, they both strap on their wings and take off, amazing the people of Crete with their godlike ability to fly. Icarus enjoys flying too much and gets too cocky and so ends up flying too high, and like his father had warned him, his wings melted and he plummeted into the sea. Daedalus had to fly on until he eventually lands in Sicily, where he mourns his son and builds a temple to Apollo.
One reason why I wanted to do this story was because I really like the song Icarus by Bastille, which takes the common approach of cockiness and how Icarus was sure he'd be fine, even though his father had warned him not to fly too high. Most of the song doesn't refer directly to the story of Icarus, but rather can be taken as talking about people taking unnecessary risks and generally just living with what seems to be reckless abandon. I won't pretend to know everything that the song is attempting to convey, but it does seem to address the idea of risk. Obedience, however, doesn't play as much of a role in it, mostly because when I think of the story I don't really think of it as being in regards to how Icarus was disobedient to his father - I think of it as him being so taken with his ability to fly that he thought that anything was possible. While there is disobedience, as he didn't heed his father's warnings, it was also just the childish thought that nothing could happen to him. He was flying high - quite literally - and the idea that anything bad could happen to him was far from his mind. So he wasn't really trying to disobey Daedalus - even if he did. This feeling is something that many people share, especially as teenagers. Bad things may happen, but we're on top of the world and the idea that our actions could have consequences is not something we think about.
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