In January, I will explore the style of the Villanelle. This form of poetry has a lot of rules. I am normally a rule-breaker, so I take up the challenge of pirouetting across this restrictive dance floor with a degree of trepidation. Villanelle # 2 I will call The Dance.
My first love is poetry. I played with rhythms as a child as a favorite toy, writing line after line and verse upon verse down in a notebook my mama gave me. The words became undecipherable squiggly lines dancing across the page. I remember sitting on my Uncle Harvey’s porch, making up poems only I could read. I learned to write real letters after I started school. That’s when my adventure with poetry started. I found myself in a dance with a fickle dancer. As soon as I got the steps right, the beat changed, and the singer sang a different tune. COVID-19 and retirement have given me the gift of time to explore, study, and capture the essence of poetry, making all its different moved on the page.
The rules I followed writing Villanelle # 2
The rules for creating a Villanelle are simple and straight forward. This style of poetry must have 19 lines and five stanzas. The closing stanza has four lines. Also, line 1 gets repeated in lines 6, 12, and 18. Thus, line 3 gets repeated in lines 9, 15, and 19. There are so many rules and so little time.
The Dance
Spinning, twirling the poet searches for the perfect word
The essence of the quickstep in the dizzy dance
A quest for the mysterious music in the rhythm undeterred
A restless movement to music left unheard
Pirouetting past pillars without a second glance
Spinning, twirling the poet searches for the perfect word
Ball change, a shift in direction and vision blurred
Flirting with disaster in this bitter romance
A quest for the mysterious music in the rhythm undeterred
Back spinning with great furry visions are franticly stirred
Pen to paper, now is the time to advance
Spinning, twirling the poet searches for the perfect word
Reeling past restless syllables to a beat still uncured
Sounds and fragments of sounds and a need to enhance
A quest for the mysterious music in the rhythm undeterred
Exaggerated elegance of a tone unbalanced and absurd
Trapped in the midst of an unfortunate circumstance
Spinning, twirling the poet searches for the perfect word
A quest for the mysterious music in the rhythm undeterred
Who is Molly Shea?
Molly Shea is an accomplished fictional short story writer from Indiana who writes short stories and novels about a fictional town called Tecumseh. To read more of her short stories and adventures, click here.
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