REViewISTA

There is something comforting in tradition; stockings on christmas, family dinner on sunday, my morning cup of coffee and villanelles. The last tradition is one that I had to acquire taste for, a strict and traditional form of poetry that harnesses in emotion and allows a poem to scream with tension. A villanelle is a poem with nineteen lines, two rhymes, two repeating refrains, five tercets and a quatrain.

I, like many young poets of today, thought any form of traditional poetry stifled my creativity. “Well, I only write in free verse, sonnets and villanelles are too limiting.” Why would one only write in free verse if they had no idea how to master what free verse was breaking away from? I still struggle with the confinement of traditional forms, most poems that I begin in form either turn into something else entirely or sound elementary with forced rhyme schemes. However, when form is done well, mastered, there is no denying it’s effectiveness and artistry.

Two of my favorite, and very well known, villanelles are ‘The Waking’ by Theodore Roethke and ‘One Art’ by Elizabeth Bishop. Both poems are built on solid refrains, ambiguous rhyme schemes and most importantly the form doesn’t swallow the content. Roethke’s poem has a haunting musicality that enhances the poems examination of waking. The villanelle is the perfect form for this poem, the repetition gives the sensation of being lulled in and out of sleep, as if life were nothing more then sleeping and waking. The emotion harnessed into Bishop’s poem is so alive and vibrant and could not have been achieved with out ridged quality of a villanelle. By the final stanza, the quatrain, the reader is overwhelmed with the sense of loss that speaker of the poem is revealing. In both of the above mentioned poems the refrains serve as a winding thread, leading the reader to the final revelation while holding the prior stanzas lines in place.

The Waking

by Theodore Rothke

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.

I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me, so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.

One Art

by Elizabeth Bishop

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.

‘The Waking’ by Roethke was made into a beautiful song by jazz artist Kurt Elling, on his ‘Nightmoves’ album. This poem along with Rainer Maria Rilke’s ‘Duino Elegies’ and Richard Wilbur’s ‘Love Calls Us to the Things of This World’ have been very inspirational to my poetry as of late, these poets ability to explore the human spirit in such restrained language and imagery is truly admirable.