Exploding Truth
There was a lot of talk of diarrhea in the past week. That is not at all what I’m referencing when I say exploding truth. Wait, what’s that? That’s not where your head went? Oh, right. Mine either…
This morning I came across this, from Adrienne Rich’s essay Vesuvius at Home: It is always what is under pressure in us, especially under pressure of concealment that explodes in poetry.
For me, the best way to discover the thing under pressure within me is through fixed form poetry. I’ve spoken of this, I’ve written about this. Now we’re doing this. There’s something about adhering to a strict format that forces connections that might otherwise not have existed. And I know a lot of you have been struggling with the question thing from the last post. If you’ve been struggling with it, you’re probably on the right track in some way. So take two of your questions. I’m taking these two:
What are the words you will not say?
Where are the monsters hiding?
Rephrase the questions so they rhyme. Like so:
What are the words you will not say?
What obstacles keep the monsters at bay?
Now we’re going to write a villanelle. I ganked this off of wikipedia. Not ashamed. (Full disclosure: I’m a little ashamed that I used the word ‘ganked’).
Your refrains will be your questions, and their meanings will change. I’m really looking forward to doing this one, because I think there’s something real here that I’m on the cusp of unlocking. A villanelle just might do the trick.
I’m expecting some villanelles in my inbox, yo. Get to it.
The villanelle consists of five stanzas of three lines (tercets) followed by a single stanza of four lines (a quatrain) for a total of nineteen lines.[16] It is structured by two repeatingrhymes and two refrains: the first line of the first stanza serves as the last line of the second and fourth stanzas, and the third line of the first stanza serves as the last line of the third and fifth stanzas.[16] The rhyme-and-refrain pattern of the villanelle can be schematized as A1bA2 abA1 abA2 abA1 abA2 abA1A2 where letters (“a” and “b”) indicate the two rhyme sounds, upper case indicates a refrain (“A”), and superscript numerals (1 and 2) indicate Refrain 1 and Refrain 2.[6]
The pattern is below set against “Do not go gentle into that good night” by Dylan Thomas:[17]
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You can browse more villanelles on the Poetry Foundation site
