“Let me alive my pleasures have: / All are Stoics in the grave.”

[larryhammer]

For Poetry Monday, another something on the contemporary side:


The Villanelle is What?, John M. Ford

Enter Mr Jno. Ford (the Elizabethan one) as King Edward the Fourth

I am the King now, and I want a sandwich.
This monarch business makes a fellow hungry.
I wonder where my brother Richard is.

What happened to the kippers left from breakfast?
Or maybe there's a bit of cold roast pheasant.
I am the King now, and I want a sandwich.

A civil war is such an awful bother.
We fought at Tewksbury and still ran out of mustard.
I wonder where my brother Richard is.

Speak not to me of pasta marinara.
I know we laid in lots of boar last Tuesday.
I am the King now, and I want a sandwich.

The pantry seems entirely full of Woodvilles
And Clarence has drunk two-thirds of the cellar.
I wonder where my brother Richard is.

If I ran England like I run that kitchen
You'd half expect somebody to usurp it.
I am the King now, and I want a sandwich.
I wonder where my brother Richard is.


Think of this, possibly, as a pre-canon fic for Shakespeare's Richard III. It does explain, compellingly, some of the history of that confusing time. If the lack of rhymes in this otherwise strict villanelle bugs you, I refer you to the title.

---L.

Subject quote by Abraham Cowley after Anacreon.

Comments

[sovay]

The pantry seems entirely full of Woodvilles
And Clarence has drunk two-thirds of the cellar.

Yay.

I have encountered this villanelle before, but I still really like it.

[larryhammer]

:-D

[thistleingrey]

(Have you read Ford's The Dragon Waiting?)

[larryhammer]

(Part of it, a long time ago; it remains in my TBR list, surviving aperiodic purges of the bookshelves.)

[thistleingrey]

(I was curious because the villanelle could tie into Ford's own narrative, too! Must admit that though I enjoyed TDW fiercely in college, I haven't dared to try it since. His two Star Trek novels have evaded my personal Suck Fairy, fortunately.)

[larryhammer]

(Growing Up Weightless holds up to rereading. I haven't dared reread The Last Hot Time though.)

[thistleingrey]

(That's very good to know! I haven't dared LHT yet, either.)