I never had much of a liking for the French forms, but the villanelle (yes, the vil has Italian roots, but I believe that it's commonly thought of as a French form) has always had a bit of a pull on me. I've never tried a ballade, or a triolet, or a roundel, for instance, but I made two or three attempts at the villanelle when I was in my late teens or early twenties. I think I still have them somewhere, but I won't bother to look for them, and neither will anyone else.
My wife and I were watching "Little Big Man", and afterwards I went online to look up General Custer. I told my wife that Custer was buried at West Point, where I was born, and I wanted to verify that. As it happens, I never found out where Custer was buried, because I got side-tracked. Photos of Native Americans have a weird sort of power over me. They always look so especially wise and dignified, and I am certain that a great many were exactly that, and much more. When I came upon the photograph of Big Foot, the Lakota chief who was killed at Wounded Knee, I was truly stunned. For the first time, I was conscious of the thought: "this, if anything, deserves a poem. A remembrance."
The two repetends came to me all at once, and for a very brief moment I entertained the notion of simply letting them constitute the poem: an elegaic couplet. Then I pondered making a sonnet; but fairly quickly I settled on a villanelle. After that it was six days and dozens of drafts before I had something I could tolerate.
But that doesn't matter. The poem was received very well, as I mentioned before. Naturally, the very next thing I did after that was....write another vil. Why that happened I'm not exactly sure. I like the sonnet form a great deal more than the vil, but I've only written one sonnet since last year. I've written six or seven vils. It's like some kind of bizarre addiction, but it's stupid and pathetic.
Naturally, I don't dare post another vil for critique. It would almost certainly be trashed. I posted only one poem since "At Wounded Knee", at Eratosphere, an unrhymed sonnet which got luke-warm comments. I was reminded of that line from Randall Jarrell's poem "90 (degrees) North", which goes something like, "No matter where I turn, my step is to the south..."
That's the problem with writing something people actually like: they expect you to be able to keep doing it. But maybe I wrote a decent poem accidentally. It could happen. Or maybe the poem stinks and those fine folks at the Sphere are crazy.
Nonetheless, I need to get these vils off my chest somehow, so why not here? No one reads my blog anyway.
*raspberry*
My wife and I were watching "Little Big Man", and afterwards I went online to look up General Custer. I told my wife that Custer was buried at West Point, where I was born, and I wanted to verify that. As it happens, I never found out where Custer was buried, because I got side-tracked. Photos of Native Americans have a weird sort of power over me. They always look so especially wise and dignified, and I am certain that a great many were exactly that, and much more. When I came upon the photograph of Big Foot, the Lakota chief who was killed at Wounded Knee, I was truly stunned. For the first time, I was conscious of the thought: "this, if anything, deserves a poem. A remembrance."
The two repetends came to me all at once, and for a very brief moment I entertained the notion of simply letting them constitute the poem: an elegaic couplet. Then I pondered making a sonnet; but fairly quickly I settled on a villanelle. After that it was six days and dozens of drafts before I had something I could tolerate.
But that doesn't matter. The poem was received very well, as I mentioned before. Naturally, the very next thing I did after that was....write another vil. Why that happened I'm not exactly sure. I like the sonnet form a great deal more than the vil, but I've only written one sonnet since last year. I've written six or seven vils. It's like some kind of bizarre addiction, but it's stupid and pathetic.
Naturally, I don't dare post another vil for critique. It would almost certainly be trashed. I posted only one poem since "At Wounded Knee", at Eratosphere, an unrhymed sonnet which got luke-warm comments. I was reminded of that line from Randall Jarrell's poem "90 (degrees) North", which goes something like, "No matter where I turn, my step is to the south..."
That's the problem with writing something people actually like: they expect you to be able to keep doing it. But maybe I wrote a decent poem accidentally. It could happen. Or maybe the poem stinks and those fine folks at the Sphere are crazy.
Nonetheless, I need to get these vils off my chest somehow, so why not here? No one reads my blog anyway.
*raspberry*
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