The Villonnet

Forms.
Forms.
Forms.

Does that send chills up your spine?
It shouldn’t. Forms can be FUN.
There I said it and I’ll say it again.
Forms can be FUN.

Perhaps we should come up with a new name for this act of manipulating words into a poetic box. Something energizing or at least something that doesn’t sound like an IRS audit. Any ideas?

It’s been awhile since I’ve added to the form pot. Let’s play with a hybrid of the Villanelle and the Sonnet called a Villonnet.

1. The Villonnet is written in Iambic Pentameter (de DUM, de DUM, du DUM . . . ) In other words, it has a beat. The scholars call them “feet.”

2. It’s written in the four-stanza/line structure of the sonnet and the two-line rhyme structure of the villanelle.

3. The final stanza replaces the sonnet couplet (just like it sounds: a couple of lines) with a typical villanelle tercet (not like it sounds: three lines.)

Here’s my attempt but check out Shadow Poetry for more examples.
I wrote this one in response to Poetic Bloomings Sunday Prompt 58

“In the air”

The days are a feast; the nights are a fest
of open roads that bridge a shallow past.
Locusts strum a metered dose of peaceful
midnight songs on a breeze of tenderness.

I step steady on stony plateaus blessed
with breath of spirit and breath of beauty
in the night air, a fusion of life where
the days are a feast; the nights are a fest.

I confess, I behave like an honored guest
among night creatures who travel by star-
light and invite me to harmonize with
midnight songs on a breeze of tenderness.

The days are a feast; the nights are a fest.
The air wakes the deep and I sleep singing
midnight songs on a breeze of tenderness.

If you have any ideas for a new name for “poetry form,” share it here.
Really, poetry shouldn’t sound like math. (with apologies to numbers and mathematicians.)

(photo: stock.xnchg, somadjinn)