HOW TO WRITE POETRY

#5 - HOW TO WRITE A PANTOUM

The pantoum is a bit like the villanelle (see Episode 2) insofar as there are repeating lines throughout the poem. It's made up of a series of 4-line stanzas (quatrains). The second and fourth lines of each stanza (verse) are repeated as the first and third lines of the next one. It's kinda cute if you like that sort of thing.

The pantoum can have as many stanzas as you want, so if you like long poems you can chatter on for ages, but I hate long poems so I've stuck to just 4 verses in the one I'm going to knock off here. The pattern outlined in (1) above continues through until the last stanza, which is different: in that one, the second line is the same as the third line of the first verse, and the last line is the same as the first line of the first verse, so the poem ends up back where it started, a situation that rather mirrors certain romantic situations one may or may not encounter.

In the best kind of pantoum the meaning of the repeated lines changes a little bit when they're repeated although the words remain exactly the same. You can do this by changing the punctuation, or with some word play, or just using a different context. But this tweaking of meanings isn’t a rigorous rule, and you don't have to do it. Also, it can be quite tricky and a lot of work, so I haven't bothered in my pantoum. I'm so ~~lazy~~ carefree.

Strictly speaking and to be somewhat anal about it the stanza in a pantoum should rhyme in the pattern ABAB but this is 2021 and we are modern ~~(and lazy)~~ and we don’t rhyme unless someone is holding a gun to our head. You could count syllables too, if you want to, but we don’t want to. If it's good enough for this chap then it should be good enough for you (and me).

Apparently the 4-stanza pantoum is quite common, probably because anything longer can be difficult to pull off, or just tedious, and that's the one I'm going to do, like I said. So anyway, if we call the 1^st stanza lines ABCD, then stanza 2 is BEDF, stanza 3 is EGFH, and the last one (the 4^th) is GCHA.

I should probably mention at this point that there are a couple of variations available to all of this if you're interested. For example, you can switch the order of the 2^nd and 4^th lines of the last stanza, or you could skip using lines from the first stanza in the last one and use new lines instead, in which case you can ignore quite a lot of what I said in section 2, and I'm falling asleep writing this but will see it through to the end because I'm a professional (retired). I think these variations make what's called the "imperfect pantoum", like Celia was what you could call the "imperfect girlfriend". That's the thing with these traditional forms: there's always some modern someone fiddling with them, or "deconstructing" them. We yawn, and stick to the old ways, and we like a girlfriend who acts like a girlfriend. They're the best kind.

So anyway, here's my first stanza, with the ABCD thing thrown in because this voluntary and largely-unread and unheralded venture is all about helping you, the imaginary reader/student/would-be poet/idler (delete as appropriate):

These long winter nights, chill and lonely A

I endure, sans electric blanket, sans lady friend B

It would be nice to warmly cuddle and share a joke or two C

My mind wanders, the wistful imaginings of a charming chap! D

Now for the 2^nd. The pattern will be this:

I endure, sans electric blanket, sans lady friend B

[new line] E

My mind wanders, the wistful imaginings of a charming chap! D

[new line] F

So here it is with my new lines put in:

I endure, sans electric blanket, sans lady friend B

These days I almost never think about Celia E

My mind wanders, the wistful imaginings of a charming chap! D

Celia ain't the only night-time heating appliance in the world F

You can see how the pattern works. I hope so, anyway. I don’t think I could make it any clearer.

Here's the 3^rd verse, with new lines G and H added in:

These days I almost never think about Celia E

I've been looking online for a new and better lady friend G

Celia ain't the only night-time heating appliance in the world F

Though a rental might be inhibitive as regards expense H

10.

And now here's the last stanza, with lines from the 1^st stanza repeated:

I've been looking online for a new and better lady friend G

It would be nice to warmly cuddle and share a joke or two C

Though a rental might be inhibitive as regards expense H

These long winter nights, chill and lonely A

And, as you can see, the poem ends up where it started, which is fitting, kind of, since I'm absolutely back where I started before Celia showed up.

11.

So that's the pantoum. Easy, wasn't it? It's a pity these poetry forms don’t keep you warm on long and cold winter nights, but so it goes. Here's the full thing without the distraction of the running alphabet:

These long winter nights, chill and lonely

I endure, sans electric blanket, sans lady friend

It would be nice to warmly cuddle and share a joke or two

My mind wanders, the wistful imaginings of a charming chap!

I endure, sans electric blanket, sans lady friend

These days I almost never think about Celia

My mind wanders, the wistful imaginings of a charming chap!

Celia ain't the only night-time heating appliance in the world

These days I almost never think about Celia

I've been looking online for a new and better lady friend

Celia ain't the only night-time heating appliance in the world

Though a rental might be inhibitive as regards expense

I've been looking online for a new and better lady friend

It would be nice to warmly cuddle and share a joke or two

Though a rental might be inhibitive as regards expense

These long winter nights, chill and lonely

12.

That ain’t bad for half an hour on a chilly October afternoon, even if I say so myself. I reckon if I tried really hard I could write a good one – and so can you! It needs a title, of course. At the moment my working title is "I'M THINKING OF BUYING AN ELECTRIC BLANKET". I'll almost certainly come up with something better, but I have bought an electric blanket, as it happens, a Silentnight™ "Comfort Control" which provides 3 levels of night-time bliss. "Bliss" is maybe the wrong word.

(This probably-never-to-be-used guide to the pantoum can be downloaded as a PDF here.)

#4 - HOW TO WRITE A SESTINA

Hold on to your hats! The sestina is a bit long – it’s got 6 stanzas (verses) of 6 lines each, plus a final verse (stanza) of 3 lines. That makes a grand total of 39 lines. Crikey! On top of that, instead of rhyme or iambic feet or stuff like that, it uses what’s called “lexical repetition”, which is a fancy way of saying “repeating words”. It’s going to take a while to explain the sestina’s basic structure, so you might want to fix yourself a stiff drink.

While there’s no rhyme, you can use syllable counting and that kind of nonsense if you want, but you don’t have to. In fact, you can use any length of line, and even mix long and short and in-between if you feel like it. Of course, if you fancy a bit of iambic pentameter no-one will stop you, but the lexical repetition is probably tough enough, as we shall see. It’s up to you. I’m not your Mum or Dad or Social Worker.

So, what about this lexical repetition thingy? What it means in the sestina is that you choose 6 “end words” (words at the end of a line) and the lines of the first 6 stanzas have to end with those words in a pattern decided on ages ago by the United Sestina Association (USA for short). Let’s deal with the pattern; please move on to the next section. You can have a rest for a couple of minutes first if you feel the need.

The pattern the line-ending words follow can be explained thusly: the first stanza will have 6 lines and 6 end-words. The following stanzas take their pattern based on a bottom-up pairing of the lines of the preceding stanza (i.e. last and first, then second-from-last and second, then third-from-last and third).

I copied that from somewhere and I don’t really get it. It’s about as easy to understand as string theory, so I’ll try to make it as simple as I can. If the first stanza lines are 1-2-3-4-5-6, the second stanza uses the end words in the order 6-1-5-2-4-3, the third is 3-6-4-1-2-5, the fourth 5-3-2-6-1-4, the fifth 4-5-1-3-6-2, and the sixth 2-4-6-5-3-1. This might make more sense when we use words instead of numbers. Unfortunately, using words can be quite tricky, as we shall see. Some people have written poems using just numbers but that’s avant-garde. Let’s push on. It’s taking ages to get to some actual poem . . .

The sixth stanza is followed by a tercet (a 3-line stanza (verse)) that includes all six of the line-ending words of the preceding stanzas, with two of the words in each line. Strictly speaking, these should take the pattern of 2–5, 4–3, 6–1; the first end-word of each pair can occur anywhere in the line, while the second must end the line. However, this order can be changed if you want to and, believe me, you might want to! But you do have to have the second word at the end of the line; it’s a rule you’re not really allowed to break unless you see yourself as some kind of poetry maverick.

Like I said, this pattern will become clearer when we use words, but there’s the rub. You might think choosing 6 words ain’t so difficult, but you’d be wrong, oh so wrong. Repeating a word a couple of times might be easy enough, but in the sestina you have to repeat 6 words 7 times, and when you try to do it you will soon find it ain’t so easy, assuming you want to make some kind of sense or not just keep repeating yourself. If making sense doesn’t matter and you see yourself as the next J. H. Prynne (look him up) it’d be a piece of cake, but let’s assume you do want to make sense. If you don’t, we might as well go home now.

So let’s choose some words. How about these: Celia, gone, heart, left, broken, selfish. All these are words I could use in a poem telling how I gave Celia my heart and she left me and broke it, but if I use the name Celia seven times in my sestina it could get tedious as hell, and there’s only one way I can think of using the words “heart” and “gone”. The same goes for “selfish”. I might get away with using these words for two or three stanzas, but by the time verses five and six arrived I’m pretty sure I’d be struggling and saying the same thing over and over again, which is what Celia did when she moaned about almost everything, but it’s not what you want in a poem.

That’s one of the real pains about writing a sestina: you choose your 6 words, you get halfway through the poem and it’s all going jolly well, then you realize you can’t think of a different way to use the words again, and you wish you had some better ones to play with.

Frankly, the words I just chose feel kind of limiting even before I begin writing the poem, even if calling Celia selfish a thousand times wouldn’t be enough in real life. But this is poetry and not real life, so instead I need to find some words to use in the sestina that can either be used in more than one way, or that can be used in more than one context, which will give me the chance to use the same word but with a slightly different sense or meaning. And, of course, some words can function as a noun with more than one meaning, and also as maybe a verb e.g. “bitch” is a noun, and “to bitch” is a verb. On the other hand, you might be lucky and find words you can use which always have exactly the same use and meaning and everything goes swimmingly, in which case you’ve hit a kind of sestina jackpot and you can forget most of what I just said, at least for now.

I have a handy hint. Until you get the hang of it, you could try borrowing the end words of a sestina someone else has already written. In that case, you start off knowing they can “work” – if someone else used them and pulled it off, then so can you. Like I said just a few moments ago, there’s nothing worse than getting half the way through your sestina and realizing you’ve set yourself an impossible task by choosing your end-words badly. Even one wrong and badly-chosen word can fuck the whole thing up, pardon my French.

Anyway, I’ve nicked some new end words from someone else, and for my sestina I’ve decided to summarize the story of yours truly and Celia. Here is my first stanza, which in good narrative style sets the scene:

Celia and I met on a day of storm. Thunder

was in the air. I had just moved in to my apartment

in the city, newly arrived back in the country

and very miserable. What had been my pleasant

life had become the opposite. I scratched

around in metaphorical dirt and lived on spinach.

You might think the end-words here are not very promising because at least four of them seem pretty much to have only one way of being used. For example, I wish “to spinach” was a verb, but it isn’t. But you’ll see how in this case it’s not a problem if you’re imaginative and inventive. It helps, when you write poetry, to be imaginative and inventive. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned that before.

10.

Here’s my second stanza:

Oddly, I really rather enjoyed living on spinach;

Celia said she didn’t like it, nor did she like thunder,

but it was like we each had an itch and we scratched

one another. She came back with me to my apartment

after we had hit it off drunkenly during a very pleasant

party at a mutual friend’s place in the country.

You can see how it works. The word “scratched” is used in a different context from in the first stanza, and “country” in the first stanza meant England, whereas in the second stanza it means the countryside. Imaginative. Inventive.

11.

Here’s my next bit:

I didn’t feel much at home back in this country

and probably, indisputably, ate way too much spinach.

Celia said she liked everything to be pleasant

about her, saying again how she disliked thunder.

Before too long she was living with me in the apartment

and our itches no longer needed to be scratched.

The poem’s going well. And all of the end words are being used pretty straightforwardly. I might have struck sestina gold!

12.

On to the next bit:

Itches are not the only things can be scratched.

I’d always had an inexplicable soft spot for country

music, and I spent loads of time in the apartment

playing it loud while pigging out on spinach

sandwiches and beer. I didn’t notice a local thunder

brewing, and how Celia was not always so pleasant.

Do you see how clever I’ve been with “country”? Imaginative. Inventive. I really cannot stress that enough. And the discerning among you will see that some of the other words are used in a slightly different context, and everything is hunky dory.

13.

Frankly, I’m getting a bit bored now and want to finish this so here are the next two chunks:

When I say Celia was not always pleasant

I mean she deliberately and wantonly scratched

my records. She said she really didn’t like thunder

but it was a zillion times better than country

music. Hearing that, I almost choked on my spinach,

telling her it was me who chose the music in my apartment.

I also very much like Phil Collins, and the apartment

often reverberated to the beat’n’bounce of his pleasant

ditties while I munched on more and more spinach.

Celia liked him too. His records weren’t scratched

but anything she regarded as remotely country

she had it in for. The atmosphere indoors was like thunder.

I’m thinking I should’ve used more difficult end words to show you how tricky things can be, or how you can use some words in more different ways than is happening here, but what the hell. Nobody asked me to do this. It’s all voluntary.

14.

Now we come to the final verse/stanza/tercet, where you have to use the end words like I explained earlier up there somewhere. Here it comes:

Celia left me and the apartment, taking her dislike of thunder

and my “The Best of Phil Collins” CD. I’ve overdosed on spinach

and scratched

till my heart bled. It’s not pleasant. I might leave the country.

You can see (a) I’ve put the end words in red so you can see them, and (b) I didn’t stick to the strict word order for the same reason as in (c) thank Christ you’re allowed to use any length of line you want. These lines are quite long and it took me at least five minutes to figure out how to use the words, and long lines made it way easier than it would’ve been if I’d had to stick to shorter lines. Whew!

15.

I’m knackered. I’m not sure I want to do this any more. Writing the actual sestina only took me about half an hour, but explaining how to do it has taken longer than I expected, and I’ve missed the start of the football on the telly. Anyway, here’s the whole poem:

Celia and I met on a day of storm. Thunder

was in the air. I had just moved in to my apartment

in the city, newly arrived back in the country

and very miserable. What had been my pleasant

life had become the opposite. I scratched

around in metaphorical dirt and lived on spinach.

Oddly, I really rather enjoyed living on spinach;

Celia said she didn’t like it, nor did she like thunder,

but it was like we each had an itch and we scratched

one another. She came back with me to my apartment

after we had hit it off drunkenly during a very pleasant

party at a mutual friend’s place in the country.

I didn’t feel much at home back in this country

and probably, indisputably, ate way too much spinach.

Celia said she liked everything to be pleasant

about her, saying again how she disliked thunder.

Before too long she was living with me in the apartment

and our itches no longer needed to be scratched.

Itches are not the only things can be scratched.

I’d always had an inexplicable soft spot for country

music, and I spent loads of time in the apartment

playing it loud while pigging out on spinach

sandwiches and beer. I didn’t notice a local thunder

brewing, and how Celia was not always so pleasant.

When I say Celia was not always pleasant

I mean she deliberately and wantonly scratched

my records. She said she really didn’t like thunder

but it was a zillion times better than country

music. Hearing that, I almost choked on my spinach,

telling her it was me who chose the music in my apartment.

I also very much like Phil Collins, and the apartment

often reverberated to the beat’n’bounce of his pleasant

ditties while I munched on more and more spinach.

Celia liked him too. His records weren’t scratched

but anything she regarded as remotely country

she had it in for. The atmosphere indoors was like thunder.

Celia left me and the apartment, taking her dislike of thunder

and my “The Best of Phil Collins” CD. I’ve overdosed on spinach

and scratched

till my heart bled. It’s not pleasant. I might leave the country.

16. It’s not a great sestina, to be honest, but it’ll do. It needs a title. I’m pretty good when it comes to thinking up titles, and I’m probably going to call this one “THE WASTE LAND”.

17. I’m sorry this took so long, but it’s 39 lines! I’m going to do something short next time, if there is a next time.

(This very useful guide to the sestina can be downloaded as a PDF here.)

#3 - HOW TO WRITE A TRIOLET

If you’ve been following this series you’ll know that last time I mentioned how some people think villanelles are difficult, but we saw how they’re not. Those same people probably think the triolet is difficult too. Frankly, I don’t know if anyone much writes triolets these days. (Oh! That rhymes!) To be honest, I’ve never written one before, but how hard can it be?

But if nobody writes them now it doesn’t really matter because if that’s the case you could start a new trend or create a niche (i.e. almost non-existent) market, which might be the first step to poetry success and - who knows? - even becoming the Poet Laureate in the future. They don’t set the bar very high for that nowadays, so you could maybe take a shot.

The triolet only has 8 lines, which is nice’n’short. The first, fourth and seventh lines are the same, as are the second and final lines, which makes the first and last couplets (pairs of lines) the same as well. All of which means you don’t have to think up many lines, although that means the ones you do think up and repeat, like in the villanelle, have to be pretty damn good, and worth repeating.

The down sides of the triolet are two: (1) there should be rhyme, and (2) you have to think about iambic feet and syllables.

As far as the rhyme is concerned, the pattern is ABaAabAB; the capital letters represent the repeated lines i.e. the repeated first, fourth and seventh lines rhyme with lines three and five, and ….. well, I’m sure you get the drift. If not, it’ll become clear as we go on. Imagine an early morning, and the meadowy landscape is beautifully blurred by a picturesque mist, Celia is dancing ballerina-like across the greensward, her fairy feet dampened by the dew, then the sun shines more strongly, the mist disperses, and everything becomes crystal, which is when you remember Celia is gone. I’m not saying this will be like that, but imagine it anyway.

Actually, in history there are a couple of other rules about the rhyme in a triolet depending on which country’s version of the triolet you look at, but I’m giving you a kind of bog-standard modern English version here, mainly because those other rules just complicate matters, and life’s complicated enough already.

The lines in the triolet should be what is called iambic* tetrameter, which is basically 8 syllables, going “dee DUM dee DUM dee DUM dee DUM”.

* Some people have dared to suggest that my iambic feet are sometimes not as iambic as they should be. Those people are wrong. When reading poetry such as a sonnet or a triolet just make sure you really go for the “dee DUM dee DUM dee DUM dee DUM” thing, and get that bouncy rhythm going, then it will be alright. You have to bounce a bit sometimes, otherwise what’s the point? Also, needless to say, I don’t spend loads of time on this stuff, and you get what you pay for.

So anyway, we need two lines that will bear repeating, and mine are

She WON’T give ME her NEW addRESS.

and

Her HEART is HARD. Her HEART is STONE.

The bits in capital letters are, of course, the “DUM” of the iambic “dee DUM”. (I’m not going to do that capital letter thing again for the other lines, it would get a bit tedious.) And yes, I do seem to be writing a lot of poems about Celia at the moment. I’m not sure she deserves it, but the poet writes what the poet has to write, apparently. I heard someone say that on the wireless.

If we now think about the line pattern of the triolet, and the way two lines are repeated, we are faced with this:

She won’t give me her new address.

Her heart is hard. Her heart is stone.

(new line needed, rhyming with “address”)

She won’t give me her new address.

(new line needed, rhyming with “address”)

(new line needed, rhyming with “stone”)

She won’t give me her new address.

Her heart is hard. Her heart is stone.

So you can see we only have to find three new lines to fill in the gaps, and a bit of rhyme, and we’re done! Easy-peasy!

Here is my completed triolet, with my three new lines:

She won’t give me her new address.

Her heart is hard. Her heart is stone.

In truth I could not care much less.

She won’t give me her new address,

And here’s the thing I need to stress:

I’m glad that bitch, that bird has flown.

She won’t give me her new address.

Her heart is hard. Her heart is stone.

That was actually a piece of cake, and not terrifically challenging, so you should also find it’s pretty easy. I’m not sure if I’m going to keep that “bitch” in line 6; I might change it to something else. “Bitch” is a word that might upset some people, but upsetting people is a big part of what art is about, so it’s probably worth keeping. Whatever. There’s loads of one-syllable words I could use to describe Celia, so I’ll have a think, but “bitch” and “bird” both start with a B, so it sounds good. Anyway, like I said, this triolet wasn’t very challenging. It took me longer to do the Cryptic Crossword in today’s newspaper, which was a bit of a bugger. I got stuck on several clues, including 4 Down: “Alice is a confused girl. (5 letters).”

As usual, we round off things by thinking up a decent title. I’m calling this one “OF CELIA, WHERE’ER SHE MAY BE”. I think the old-fashioned poetic-sounding contraction of “Wherever” to “Where’er” is a nice touch.

(This handy guide to the triolet can be downloaded as a PDF here.)

#2 - HOW TO WRITE A VILLANELLE

A lot of poets say that the villanelle is really difficult to write, but it isn’t.

It is also a very useful kind of poem when you have a couple of things you want to say more than once or, to be exact, four times, although you can say some things to some people an infinite number of times and they won’t take it in. (I am thinking of you as I write this, Celia.)

The villanelle has five stanzas (or verses) of three lines (what poets call tercets when they want to sound clever) followed by a single stanza of four lines (which is a quatrain). It comes to a grand total of 19 lines.

I realise some of you may think 19 lines is a bit long, but it's actually not because, if you think about it, 2 of the lines are each used 4 times, so in effect you get 8 lines for the price of 2 (it’s like being in a poetry supermarket!) and actually there are only 13 “new” lines, one fewer than in the sonnet.

The lines you repeat are used in a set pattern: the first line of the first stanza is used as the last line of the second and fourth stanzas, and the third line of the first stanza is used as the last line of the third and fifth stanzas. The last stanza ends with the two repeated lines. This sounds a bit complicated but you will get the picture as we go along. Come, take my imaginary hand.

The first thing you need to do (it might be the second thing if you have a stiff drink at your elbow) is figure out the couple of things you want to say more than once, and then say them. Another one of the good things about the villanelle is that you don’t have to count syllables or worry about iambic or any other kind of feet or that sort of stuff, unlike in the sonnet. You can if you want to, but you don’t have to. Some people count syllables in their sleep, but that’s quite sad, and it’s also a recognised medical condition. I think you can get treatment for it on the NHS if you’re a UK resident.

Anyway, the two things I’m itching to say, and which will be the lines I repeat, are

Since you left I’ve been absolutely fine

and

That “Best of Phil Collins” CD you have is mine

So these will be the first and third lines of my first “tercet”, and the observant among you will have already noted that they rhyme.

To make the tercet (or stanza, or verse) I need a third line to stick in between those two, and I have one, and so this is my first tercet:

Since you left I’ve been absolutely fine,

And I have something else I want to say:

That “Best of Phil Collins” CD you have is mine.

In the second stanza (I’m not going to call it a tercet any more; it’s too poncy) the last (or third) line is the same as the first line of the first one, and the first line of this stanza has to rhyme with the first line of the first one and the third line of this one i.e. with both, because they are the same. The second line of this one, between the first and the third, has to rhyme with the second line of the first stanza. Clear as mud, huh? Think of the pattern like this:

(line ending in the “ine” sound)

(line ending in the “ay” sound)

Since you left I’ve been absolutely fine.

Finding rhymes is sometimes tricky but it’s not that tricky, and here is what I did:

I have not slumped into a terminal decline

And Celia, I welcome each new sunshiny day.

Since you left I’ve been absolutely fine.

In the third stanza, the last line has to be the same as the last line of the first one, and of course the first line of this one has to rhyme with that one, and the second line has to rhyme with the second line of the previous ones. Whew! By the way, I know I’ve been saying “one” a lot, and I should maybe rewrite it a bit, but I won’t. Anyway, it’s like this:

(line ending in the “ine” sound)

(line ending in the “ay” sound)

That “Best of Phil Collins” CD is mine.

Here it is with all the words put in:

It may be that you think I have no spine

But you’re wrong, and the truth is here to stay:

That “Best of Phil Collins” CD you have is mine.

The sharp-eyed reader will have seen there’s no rule against slightly ‘tweaking’ your repeated lines if you want to. The poetry police will not come and punish you, and a little bit of tweaking shows you are not one of those people who stick so rigidly to the rules as to be dull and boring.

You might think this is getting tedious now, because we still have about half the poem to go, but stick with it. Success in the world of poetry is not just about sucking up to people with influence. Sometimes you have to do a bit of hard work, albeit it’s not what most people with real jobs would call hard work.

So, here comes the fourth stanza, which will be in this pattern, with the last line being the one we kicked off with ten minutes ago:

(line ending in the “ine” sound)

(line ending in the “ay” sound)

Since you left I’ve been absolutely fine.

And here it is, with the words:

Celia, I have never been the sort to whine,

And this is what I simply have to convey:

Since you left I’ve been absolutely fine.

I think by now you will have got the drift. Like I said, the villanelle is a good form because you can say things more than once and in that way Celia will have no excuse for not getting the message (if she reads the poem).

We have one more 3-line stanza to go. Here is the pattern, with the last line being the same (give or take) as the last line of the one we started with:

(line ending in the “ine” sound)

(line ending in the “ay” sound)

That “Best of Phil Collins” CD is mine.

And so, filled in, we get:

As I crack open another bottle of wine

The absence of that record causes me dismay

Celia, that “Best of Phil Collins” CD is mine.

As you can see, this is the third time we have reminded Celia about the CD. It’s a really good record and captures Phil at his best, as it says in the title, and I want it back.

You will be pleased to know we have now finished with the 3-line stanzas and it’s time to round off the whole thing with the 4 line “quatrain”, the last two lines of which will be the lines we have been repeating. Here is mine:

It is not in my nature to weakly repine

And every day I go out with my friends to play.

Since you left I’ve been absolutely bloody fine,

And Celia, that “Best of Phil Collins” CD is mine.

10.

And here is the finished villanelle:

Since you left I’ve been absolutely fine,

And I have something else I want to say:

That “Best of Phil Collins” CD you have is mine.

I have not slumped into a terminal decline

And Celia, I welcome each new sunshiny day.

Since you left I’ve been absolutely fine.

It may be that you think I have no spine

But you’re wrong, and the truth is here to stay:

That “Best of Phil Collins” CD you have is mine.

Celia, I have never been the sort to whine,

And this is what I simply have to convey:

Since you left I’ve been absolutely fine.

As I crack open another bottle of wine

The absence of that record causes me dismay

Celia, that “Best of Phil Collins” CD is mine.

It is not in my nature to weakly repine

And every day I go out with my friends to play.

Since you left I’ve been absolutely bloody fine,

And Celia, that “Best of Phil Collins” CD is mine.

As you can see, it’s pretty good, and only took about a quarter of an hour to put together, which proves that the villanelle is not as difficult as some people make out, as mentioned earlier.

11.

Of course, you have finally to choose a title. To be honest, sometimes it takes me longer to think up a good title than it does to write the poem. My tentative title for this one is “TO CELIA, PRINCESS OF THIEVES”. I might change it. I’m not keen on that “Princess” bit.

(This extremely useful guide to the villanelle can be downloaded as a PDF here.)