"I'll just Dash off a Villanelle," she thought.

[eredien]

Villanelles are hard.
Especially if I am not good at rhyming.
Especially if the word I need to rhyme for is "exactness."

Why do I pick the hardest ones for me? As if poetry wasn't masochistic enough a discipline already.

Comments

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

It's no fun if it's easy.

[cucumberseed.livejournal.com]

Damn.

[rabidfangurl.livejournal.com]

This is why Athena gave us the rhyming dictionary. Several of which can be found online.

[thoughtsdriftby.livejournal.com]

any three syllable word ending in ess
---
lets see 5 tercets, a quatrain that's an envelope stanza with an enjamble couplet... that might work or must it be heroic?

Q: does it have to be any good? :-)

more seriously: it should be a simple tune

applaud that you would set aside the time for such
needing more poems the world, showing your courage

[eredien]

I'd like it to be good. :)

Thanks.

[eredien]

I wrote down a longish list of rhymes anyway, but for me trying to fit the line to a rhyme always ends in horrible doggrel. (ie, it has to fit the sense and theme or there's no point to the rhyme).

[eredien]

That's sort of my de facto life philosphy.

[eredien]

That's what I said around 11 last night.

[wherdragon.livejournal.com]

The only thing I came up with was a family made-up word "perzactness", which you could spell with an x instead of the z, since it's made up. Means pretty much the same as "exactness".

I have no other help to offer but that and well wishes. Sorry!

[thoughtsdriftby.livejournal.com]

Welcome

Mmmm, maybe if you started with a really bad pun in the quatrain then dribbled the horrible doggerel backward.

Could be fun, depends on the pun :-)

[(Anonymous)]

I tried starting backward, but I don't think it's a bad-pun kind of poem.

[eredien]

Oh, wow! Hi!
Thanks for the suggestion, but I am afraid that no one but your family would then understand my poem! :)

Well wishes to you, too! If you would like to write back and forth (I would like to send you, you know, snail mail) please leave a message for me.

[eredien]

Oops, that was me.

[thoughtsdriftby.livejournal.com]

No worries
thinking more to write something drippingly awful first, an ice breaker. the form seems to have evolved from country tune circa... drat have to look that up. Very old.

As with most thing literature and poem each reemergence is more hallowed in method and strict in form. In another 100 years a Vilanelle will likely become impossible to write because word selection will become limited to those existing deemed worthy(something like that).

So my suggestion: use pun, satire, poor rhyme.... make a few real stinkers. It allows you to practice the form knowing you're going to totally destroy them late. An do dispose of them properly. You wouldn't want to become poet laureate 20 years from now and have a crumple bit of dreck discovered stuck to to the portalet at the city dump.

Sadly when you do get a few done and work on the serious ones they will still look like dreck, but keep those. It sometimes takes 100 years before a poem gathers it's own grace and it's writer is the least likely to see that at it's birth.

[wherdragon.livejournal.com]

Why I would love to! (Sorry for getting to this late) I will go off to send you my address, unless you already have it?

[eredien]

No, I don't; I haven't had any contact info for you since you graduated. I was going to get it from trifles when I saw them this past weekend, when we were going to set up a time to visit them in their new place or have them come visit myself and raxvulpine; but if you want to send it to me now that would be great. :)