all gone
In the comments, a few posts back, Rita from Accidental Blogger suggested that I take a look at some villanelles, an intricate poetry form arranged in verses of three lines, with alternating stanzas ending with one of two repeated, rhyming lines. The first two lines of the villanelle, as well as the last two lines, consist of the two repeating lines. And the middle lines of all the stanzas rhyme with each other.
Rita included a link to an example, which demonstrates that the villanelle is also the most restrictive of all sandwich forms.
One of my favorite villanelles -- in fact, one of my favorite poems -- is One Art by Elizabeth Bishop. The losses described in it are, for the most part, losses that Bishop actually suffered – a condensed autobiography of absence. Bishop always claimed that One Art came to her in a burst of inspiration, Athena from the head of Zeus. Her notebooks, filled with erasures and corrections, tell a different story.
The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.
--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.
17 comments:
I love this poem, have taught it several times to high school poets learning the form.
Do you suppose the villanelle lends itself to mourning poetry? "Do not go gentle" is also a villanelle.
Oh, yes. I quite like that. I wonder that I've never seen it before. Or don't remember it.
It reminds me, not in style, but somewhat in sentiment (kind of a next step) of a David Ignatow poem I discovered yesterday: Rescue the Dead.
"Finally, to forgo love is to kiss a leaf..."
A villanelle that I was obsessed with when I was about 16 was Mad Girl's Love Song by Sylvia Plath. The refrain went something like:
I close my eyes and all the world goes dead
I think I made you up inside my head.
i love Elizabeth Bishop. something in her diliigence - so much observation and reflection forced into the cramped confines of structure, almost perfect - leaves me feeling almost as though i have run a race each time i read her.
and yeh, at 16, Mad Girl's Love Song and The Cure were the only ones who understood me, bless them. ;)
Last night, the husband of my son's tutor collapsed and died from cardiac arrest. He was a huge figure in our community and his death has sent shock waves. He was 68. His wife, my son's tutor, is a wonderful woman and I have spent much of the morning thinking about how much loss she has had to face in her time. Their 12 year old daughter died years ago in a sledding accident. I wonder if she feels as though she has mastered the art of losing, or if this time, it will undo her? I imagine it won't, in the end. I hope not.
Sorry to digress from the intent of your post... but this poem really struck me given how much my morning has been spent thinking about loss.
Oh, Lori, how terrible.
For awhile, and for no good reason, I set myself to memorize this one, and "Sleeping on the Ceiling."
Have you read The Diary of Helena Morley, which Bishop translated? It is one of my favorite books.
i have always loved this poem.
and most of bishop's poems.
and marianne moore's, too.
thanks for reminding me.
I memorized it too. I used to recite it to myself, between sobs, every morning on the drive in to work.
Oh, I love this poem. I had totally forgetten all about it.
Thanks for reminding me!
Lovely poem. Long lost in the cobwebs of my memory til now. Thank you.
I like it. I've never heard/read this one before.
One of my favorites, and always good to see.
niobe...never read it until now but it resonates. Thanks so much for sharing - not just the poem but of yourself.
I have never read this before, but I love it. And the part you just mentioned about crying on the drive to work...that's what I do too. Never thought of reciting something, but I will give it a try!
I love a well-written villanelle! And I agree with s. that there is something about the structure that seems really suited to mourning... thanks for sharing this one with me; I hadn't read it before.
cinnamon gurl, s -- I think you have a point. The repetition echos the obsessive nature of grief, the compulsion to revisit the loss, worrying the frayed seam until it splits apart.
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