two villanelles for national Poetry Month

When I was a librarian, I was the one who made certain that the library's poetry section was kept modestly current, and that the collection included enough of the classics to ... well, to keep it from being embarrassing. Did the books circulate a lot? No. Did I care? Not really. 


How many times, after all, have I sat in a library or bookstore and its poetry there, but have not brought it home? Sometimes, you need a dip, not a full immersion. 


Were I still a librarian, I would purchase this book for the library. 

What is a villanelle? Poets.org gives this daunting definition:
The highly structured villanelle is a nineteen-line poem with two repeating rhymes and two refrains. The form is made up of five tercets followed by a quatrain. The first and third lines of the opening tercet are repeated alternately in the last lines of the succeeding stanzas; then in the final stanza, the refrain serves as the poem's two concluding lines. Using capitals for the refrains and lowercase letters for the rhymes, the form could be expressed as: A1 b A2 / a b A1 / a b A2 / a b A1 / a b A2 / a b A1 A2.


Yikes. 


But... allow me to share two examples and point you to a third. I assure you: you all have read villanelles without knowing it; their repetitive, almost soothing structure can ease the most stark and necessary conclusion. "Do not go gentle into that good night," says Dylan Thomas, in a villanelle studied by every school child -  "Rage, rage against the dying of the light." 


And now, the poems. 


From Elizabeth Bishop, 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.

And, from Theodore Roethke, The Waking.


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.

• Read "Spread it like a roll of nickels" for more information, and a wonderful discussion with one of the editors (and a contributor).

Elizabeth Bishop - One Art

Elizabeth Bishop's poetry was not in the curriculum when I was taking my undergraduate degree. Except for her friendship with Robert Lowell, I remained ignorant of her until I read Breathless, by Louise DeSalvo, a memoir of her own struggles with asthma, and an examination of how asthma affected herself and several literary figures.

I was fascinated, in a purely selfish way, since I am asthmatic, and I know how enervating the disease can be. What I had not thought about, until I read DeSalvo's book, was how the disease can affect the rhythms of one's creativity and art. If writing is like breathing, an asthmatic's phrases may be as acute and self-absorbed as one's precarious breath.

One of the ways DeSalvo began to cope with her extreme sensitivity to her asthma triggers was to rethink the pleasures she was forced to curtail. Eating in a restaurant, for example, became difficult when she never knew when someone's perfume, or a whiff of smoke would cause a fit of coughing and breathlessness. She and her husband learned to cook wonderful meals at home - creamy risottos, for example - and to enjoy the small actions of preparing a meal: chopping, rinsing, seasoning. She learned to focus on details that can enabled joy, and strengthened the close observation of her life -- and the subjects of her writing, her art.

So, too with Elizabeth Bishop, whose writing now enables my own joy, and my own sense of proportion.

One Art
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.