Session 7: Villanelles and Sestinas

French forms: Villanelles and Sestinas 

These are both difficult forms to master: they’re both quite restrictive, using repeating elements which provide a somewhat rigid structure to the poems.


Villanelles
The villanelle is a French form, though not as old as the sestina - the fixed-form villanelle, containing the nineteen-line dual-refrain, first derives from Jean Passerat's poem 'Villanelle (J'ay perdu ma Tourterelle)', published in 1606. Perhaps the most famous villanelle written in English is 'Do not go gentle into that good night' by Dylan Thomas (1951).

A villanelle is a nineteen-line poetic form consisting of five tercets (3 lines) followed by a quatrain (4 lines) . There are two refrains and two repeating rhymes, with the first and third line of the first tercet repeated alternately until the last stanza, which includes both repeated lines.

A1 - refrain one
b - repeating rhyme one
A2 - refrain two

a - repeating rhyme two
b
A1

a
b
A2

a
b
A1

a
b
A2

a
b
A1
A2

In the session, we looked at Thomas' poem in a group, then split into pairs/smaller groups and explored the following villanelles. In pairs/small groups, we discussed: what makes the poem effective, and what effect does the restrictions of form give? what lines are the refrains? do the refrains change throughout the poem, and to what effect? what are the other repeated rhymes? what is the general tone of the poem? what is the subject, person, tense? how effective is the villanelle form in this example?

• 'Nursery', by Kiki Petrosino - where the form lends a sinister, psychedelic, claustrophobic quality
• 'Self-Help', by Michael Ryan - a poem with ambitious rhyme choices, and a comical if cutting message
• 'September 2011', by Elizabeth Seydel Morgan - a somewhat opaque and confusing poem, blending the idea of 9/11 with some unfathomable anxiety
• 'My Darling Turns to Poetry at Night', by Anthony Lawrence - a traditional, somewhat contrived poem, which uses basic rhymes and half/near rhymes, and remains quite bland  

Discussions prompted us to think about what banks of rhyme words are good to choose for villanelles - many seem to opt for words like 'light', 'night', 'bright', ect. Luke suggested that you wouldn't use the word 'orange', for example - but in this poem 'Gratuitous Oranges', David Shapiro gives it a go!

Browse other villanelles here.


Exercise 1: Past Postcards
For this activity, you will need some picture postcards, with the odd, often incongruous messages which accompany them - these can be sourced at the Twitter account @PastPostcard. 

1. Take an envelope, and take out the postcard, making sure to look at the picture side only.
2. Do a quick 5 minute free write about the scene you see.
3. Turn over the postcard to read the message on the back.
4. Taking this as your one refrain (either A1 or A2), go back to your free write to source another refrain.
5. Ruminate over what your poem could be about - it doesn’t have to be driven by the postcard.
6. To create the rhyming lines (a and b), it’s perhaps easiest to build two small banks of (6-7) rhyming words, which you can use to fill the gaps.



Sestinas
The earliest known sestina was written in around 1200 by French troubadour Arnaut Daniel, who has since been known as the father of the form. He called the form 'cledisat', meaning, more or less, 'interlock'. Dante and Petrach developed the form further, and sometimes it is classified as an Italian form because of this. The earliest English sestina was Edmund Spenser’s 'Ye wastefull woodes', a part of his Shepherd’s Calendar (1579). The form saw a revival in the 1930s under W. H. Auden, and increased popularity in the 1950s.

Usually unrhymed, but sometimes following iambic pentameter, the sestina consists of six, six-line stanzas, and a three-line envoy. The end-words of the first stanza are repeated as end-words the subsequent five stanzas, though in a different order each time. The closing envoy contains all six words, two per line, placed in the middle and at the end of the three lines.

1 2 3 4 5 6
6 1 5 2 4 3
3 6 4 1 2 5
5 3 2 6 1 4
4 5 1 3 6 2
2 4 6 5 3 1
(6 2)
(1 4)
(5 3)

In the session, we looked at 'The Shrinking Lonesome Sestina', by Miller Williams as a group, then split into pairs/smaller groups and explored the following sestinas (without their envoys):

• 'Sestina: Altaforte', by Ezra Pound - which makes each stanza its own separate, numbered section
• 'Let Me Count the Waves', by Sandra Beasley - an unusual sestina, to say the least
• 'A sestina for a black girl who does not know how to braid hair', by Raych Jackson - a sestina with ambitious word choices such as 'harvest', challenging the poet to keep the meaning fresh
• 'Sestina of the Tramp-Royal', by Rudyard Kipling - a sestina written as a first-person monologue, using dialect and colloquialisms to build a sense of character 

In pairs/small groups, we discussed: what is the tone/subject/person/tense of the poem? what are the repeated words? do they appear in any different forms throughout the poem (homophones, singular/plural, prefix/suffix)? We also ruminated on what the envoy might be, using the words as they appear in the poem, in the order prescribed by the form.

Browse other sestinas here. 

Exercise 2: Word Bank

For this activity, you will need to pick something/somewhere within a museum or art gallery to study - individual objects/artefacts work best. You will need to pick 6 words - not all nouns, and not all directly relating to your chosen subject. 

1. Take a picture of one of the museum's collections, exhibits, or scenes. 

2. From the table, pick 6 random words that you can use to construct the three lines of your envoy. This will decide the pattern of your words in the rest of the poem. 

3. Go and find your collection in the museum, and write your sestina using the structure you've built. Carry out a free write first, if this helps.