How to Write a Villanelle
If you would write a villanelle
Choose two of your most brilliant lines,
Ones you should have jettisoned.
Repeat them till you're bored
And so's your reader if he's stuck
This far through your villanelle.
Do likewise if you find a perfect rhyme.
Have no illusions that you are the first:
Whoever was, he should have jettisoned
All his favorite rhymes and lines.
So should you. Try fancy foreign forms
If you would write a villanelle.
As with new lovers: you repeat a line
Till you are bored and so is he or she,
That line you should have jettisoned,
For soon you may suspect that he's or she's
A villain/villainess who does not care
if you would write a villanelle.
This one you should have jettisoned.
Structure
19 lines · 6 stanzas