19 Lines

In high school I was taught that villanelles were considered "light verse" before the 20th-century - a form for slight, entertaining poems. Seems that's not strictly true - it was seen as sophomoric and overwrought, too exotic for its own good. I don't know if it really was Dylan Thomas' "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" in 1952 that changed it, but if you search high and low it's still tough to find a comic villanelle.


Oh, and here's an interesting fact courtesy of Wikipedia: "The modern nineteen-line dual-refrain form of the villanelle derives from nineteenth-century admiration of the only Renaissance poem in that form: a poem about a turtledove titled 'Villanelle' by Jean Passerat (1534–1602)."


Here's a translation of that one:

Villanelle

Jean Passerat

I have lost my turtledove:
 Isn't that her gentle coo? 
I will go and find my love.


Here you mourn your mated love; 
Oh, God—I am mourning too:
 I have lost my turtledove.


If you trust your faithful dove, 
Trust my faith is just as true; 
I will go and find my love.


Plaintively you speak your love; 
All my speech is turned into 
"I have lost my turtledove."


Such a beauty was my dove, 
Other beauties will not do; 
I will go and find my love.


Death, again entreated of, 
Take one who is offered you: 
I have lost my turtledove; I
 will go and find my love.




I found this in "Rebel Angels: 25 Poets of the New Formalism," edited by my strictly-platonic lit-crush Mark Jarman. This is not a paragon of the form, but I'm saving Elizabeth Bishop's "One Art" and Theodore Roethke's "The Waking" for another time.

Entropic Villanelle

Tom Disch

Things break down in different ways.
The odds say croupiers will win.
We can’t, for that, omit their praise.


I have had heartburn several days,
And it’s ten years since I’ve been thin.
Things break down in different ways.


Green is the lea and smooth as baize
Where witless sheep crop Jessamine
(We can’t, for that, omit their praise)


And meanwhile melanomas graze
Upon the meadows of the skin
(Things break down in different ways).


Though apples spoil, and meat decays,
And teeth erode like aspirin,
We can’t, for that, omit their praise.


The odds still favor croupiers,
But give the wheel another spin.
Things break down in different ways:
We can’t, for that, omit their praise.