A villanelle is a 19-line poem with two rhyming sounds, repeating lines 1 and 3 throughout. It is divided into triplets and a final quatrain, with a circular rhyme scheme of ABA in triplets and ABAB in quatrains. The form originated in medieval times and became popular in the Renaissance. Notable poets who wrote villanelles include Dylan Thomas, Seamus Heaney, and Sylvia Plath. The structure is fixed, similar to the sonnet and sestet.
A villanelle is a fixed poetic form consisting of 19 lines with two rhyming sounds in all, in which line 1 of the poem is repeated in lines 6, 12 and 18 and line 3 is repeated in lines 9, 15 and 19. The the poem as a whole is divided into stanzas of three lines each, which are called triplets, up to the final stanza or quatrain of four lines. Each repeated verse, or refrain, alternately closes a triplet until the final quatrain, in which the two refrains act as a closing couplet. With a rhyme scheme in a pattern of ABA in triplets and ABAB in quatrains, the structure of the poem is circular rather than linear. The best-known example of a villanelle is Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night, written by Dylan Thomas.
As a classical form, the villanelle began in medieval times as an unstructured ballad. In the Renaissance, a popular work by Jean Passerat about a lost turtle dove first used the rigid structure commonly associated with this poetic form. Passerat’s work became better known in the 19th century. The word villanelle is a French variation of the Italian word for “peasant”, as this type of poem was initially associated with pastoral or country themes.
Most of the villanelles were written by English-speaking poets. Writers who contributed to this form include Edwin Arlington Robinson, Seamus Heaney, Sylvia Plath, Elizabeth Bishop, WH Auden and Theodore Roethke. Contemporary villanelles are often written using iambic pentameter, and refrain lines are sometimes altered slightly or punctuated differently as the villanelle stanzas progress towards the final quatrain.
A modern example of a villanelle is Theodore Roethke’s poem The Waking. In this poem, the refrain lines used in the final couplet are “I wake to sleep and take my waking slowly. / I learn by going where I have to go.” The final rhymes used for the first rhyme sound are: slow, go, know, you, how, do. The second rhyming sound, used for the central parts of the verses, is: fear, ear, there, ladder, air, neighbor.
The villanelle is a type of fixed form, where the poem must follow prescribed elements such as rhythm, meter or pattern. Two other classic fixed verse forms are the sonnet and the sestet. Sonnets may follow the Italian or English variation. A sestet has certain words that are repeated at specified points within the poem.
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