"Technical mastery should not astound— / The sense must seem an echo to the sound"

[larryhammer]

John Hollander's Rhyme's Reason is my favorite poetry reference book -- and not just as a light collection of self-describing forms, for he also illuminates forms of rhetoric and the subtleties of metrical variation. But the self-describing forms would be enough. This one blows me away, every read:

This form with two refrains in parallel?
(Just watch the opening and the third line.)
The repetitions build the villanelle.

The subject thus established, it can swell
Across the poet-architect's design:
This form with two refrains in parallel

Must never make them jingle like a bell,
Tuneful but empty, boring and benign;
The repetitions build the villanelle

By moving out beyond the tercet's cell
(Though having two lone rhyme-sounds can confine
This form). With two refrains in parallel

A poem can find its way into a hell
Of ingenuity to redesign
The repetitions. Build the villanelle

Till it has told the tale it has to tell;
Then two refrains will finally intertwine.
This form with two refrains in parallel
The repetitions build: The Villanelle.

Hollander doesn't manage this level of practical, intelligent advice in every example. But there's many enough bright with insight and delight.

(Especially when compared with The Desolation Poems.)

---L.

Comments

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I love this. Performative instruction.

I remember going through, collecting examples of rhyme forms when I was writing a preface to a rhyming dictionary (alas, the preface was never published). I discovered a great villanelle by Swinburne called "A clasp of hands" (http://www.darsie.net/library/swinburne.html#clasp)

[larryhammer]

Like most of Swinbourne, that's lovely -- but I don't think that's a villanelle. Or not any form of villanelle I'm familiar with. If anything, I'd call it three concatenated roundels.

---L.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

You know, even as I was linking, I was thinking that it might not actually be a villanelle. I should have read over the poem above once more--or even my own preface, from back in the day :-P

[larryhammer]

They're all French forms with confusing variations.

---L.

Rhyme's Reason

[ronron1k.livejournal.com]

That book sounds like a fascinating read.

Re: Rhyme's Reason

[larryhammer]

It is. And slim -- even in the latest edition, expanded with examples from other poets; the meat of the matter is 70 pages long, every one of them graceful and ferociously intelligent.

---L.

off topic but of poetry interest (and maybe of interst to you)

[desayunoencama.livejournal.com]

Just got this call:

"Atlantic Canada's newest online poetry journal, RHYTHM Poetry Magazine, seeks submissions of unpublished metrical verse (2-6 poems) for its inaugural issue. Free verse and prose poetry will be rejected. Submit your poems and a short bio to rhythm@dal.ca. Deadline: December 1, 2007."

FWIW. (That's all I know.)

Re: off topic but of poetry interest (and maybe of interst to you)

[larryhammer]

Huh. Cool. Thanks.

---L.