A villanelle (also known as villanesque) is a 6 stanza poem that consists of: five tercets (3 line stanzas), and ; one quatrain (4 line stanza). “...to be lost that their loss is no disaster” in the first stanza is then rephrased as “None of these will bring disaster” in the third stanza, and then is rephrased again in the fifth stanza as: “I miss them but it wasn’t a disaster.”, The poem then develops this claim or idea in the middle section, “Lose something every day,” “I lost my mother’s watch.” The poem builds up to a conclusion by discussing bigger and bigger things the speaker loses, from her mother’s watch to “three loved houses” to “two cities” to “a continent.”. Another way to prevent getting this page in the future is to use Privacy Pass. A villanelle structure could also be used for writing a piece of music. How will you use the refrain in each stanza of your villanelle? Go for words that are easy to rhyme with, such as “son,” “zoo,” or “age,” rather than words that are very difficult to use in a rhyme, like “orange.”. Include your email address to get a message when this question is answered. [2] Learn the rules of a villanelle. Such as: “I was six when my brother and I saw a leopard at the San Diego Zoo.”, If you are writing the poem as a direct address to someone else, such as your brother, you could begin by discussing the last time you saw or spoke to this person. What will the tone of your villanelle be? I'm going nuts just trying to fill a shell This article was co-authored by Megan Morgan, PhD. And my professor, Christine Stewart, made it fun because she encouraged us to work within the form, but if the poem evolved beyond the form, that was fine. I like writing poems that have some form. The villanelle is an example of a fixed verse form. The rhyming words are the same last bar of each phrase. Or more casual and direct? By Yetunde Ogunfidodo more by Yetunde Ogunfidodo. In the first stanza, use the line between the first and second refrain to introduce the subject to the reader. X {"smallUrl":"https:\/\/www.wikihow.com\/images\/thumb\/0\/07\/Write-a-Villanelle-Step-1-Version-3.jpg\/v4-460px-Write-a-Villanelle-Step-1-Version-3.jpg","bigUrl":"\/images\/thumb\/0\/07\/Write-a-Villanelle-Step-1-Version-3.jpg\/aid17250-v4-728px-Write-a-Villanelle-Step-1-Version-3.jpg","smallWidth":460,"smallHeight":345,"bigWidth":"728","bigHeight":"546","licensing":"