Villanelles

I’ve been trying for a couple weeks now to write about truth and lies, facts and opinions, but I keep getting stuck, so I’ll share some poetry instead. I start with Elizabeth Bishop’s One Art.

One Art

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.

This poem is a villanelle. If you look at it it has 5 tercets (stanza’s with 3 lines) and a final quatrain (4 liens). Within that form are two repeating refrains – the first and last lines of the opening tercet. Then, just to make it tricky, it also has end of line rhymes for the middle line of each stanza. Another famous villanelle you may know is Dylan Thomas’

Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And now for one of my own (!) written to parallel E Bishop’s:

AN ARTFUL POINT

The art of lying isn’t hard to foster.
Tell your friend you had a sweet old dog,
then tell them how you lost her.

say you were a hostler,
or saw two moose at dawn standing in a bog.
The art of lying isn’t hard to foster,

just make yourself a roster
of what was said to whom (to give your mind a jog).
Don’t forget, you said you lost her

house keys on the beach. Sorry it will cost her
to replace them. Search was hampered by the fog.
The art of lying isn’t hard to foster.

Say the world is flat and when you crossed her
You found a girl who was a frog,
but then you went and lost her.

And when your lover feels like an impostor
working late and talking of her job,
just tell yourself you haven’t lost her.
The art of lying isn’t hard to foster.

Okay, it needs some work, but it was a fun exercise.