Explore Poems: Villanelle

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Villanelle with a Line Borrowed from Bishop
By Kimiko Hahn
The child looks out the window at the peeling barn.
The mother sits on the roof and waves at her.
The grandmother sings to the marvelous stove.

The child has put away her Little Marvel Stove
because her grandmother is baking real bread.
The child...
Verse Forms
Villanelle
Villanelle
By Michael Luis Medrano
Jesús José Medrano went away
no more motel rooms to clean
he asked my dad to take his place

when Dad cried and looked the other way
the mortician closed the coffin on the body
Jesús José Medrano went away

He wore his best gray suit...
Living
Death
Sorrow & Grieving
Verse Forms
Villanelle
Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night
By Dylan Thomas
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...
Living
Death
Sorrow & Grieving
Relationships
Family & Ancestors
Funerals
Verse Forms
Villanelle
Types/Modes
Elegy
+ 3 more
After Roethke
By Randall Mann
The vulgar ones will grind, and gnaw the bone,
our semipublic faces caked with joy.
The pure admire the pure, and live alone.

If we could find a bias of our own,
then we, the altar- and the mama’s boy—
the vulgar ones—will grind and...
Verse Forms
Villanelle
Heartless Humour Blues
By Raymond Antrobus
My mother says my father had a heartless sense of humour.
That winter she fell, ice on the road—

She can't forget her bruise, his laughter.
Not even his shadow helped her up or soothed her.

He watched from the kerb—boozy red-eyed Dad—
laughed when...
Living
Coming of Age
Relationships
Family & Ancestors
Home Life
Verse Forms
Villanelle
Out Walking
By Jennifer Horne
We don’t know how to behave.
As in adolescence, we stand uneasily
At awkward distances from one another.

As in adolescence, we stand uneasily
In this new space, revising
All that we’ve been taught.

In this new space, revising
The meaning of breath, hand, touch, near,
Our bodies...
Living
Life Choices
Youth
The Mind
Verse Forms
Villanelle
Anxiety & Insecurity
Prospects
By Anthony Hecht
We have set out from here for the sublime
Pastures of summer shade and mountain stream;
I have no doubt we shall arrive on time.

Is all the green of that enameled prime
A snapshot recollection or a dream?
We have set out from here...
Verse Forms
Villanelle
The Madness of Emperors
By George Bradley
Suppose your mere existence sickened you,
That human kind appeared the name of greed,
Your horse a god compared to gods you knew,

And suddenly a mercenary crew
Of drunken thugs insisted you succeed
To just the sort of sham that sickened you:

Declared a god...
Social Commentaries
History & Politics
Verse Forms
Villanelle
Daedal
By A.E. Stallings
To build a labyrinth it takes
A twisted mind, a puzzled art,
A fractal branching of mistakes.

Drag out the shovels and the rakes,
The spirit level, sacred chart.
To build a labyrinth it takes

Shadows, stones, a way that snakes
And ladders to its shaky start;
An...
Living
Life Choices
Verse Forms
Villanelle
Optimism
Letter to My Blackout
By Maria Hummel
Dear sip, dear shotgun, dear pound:
beneath the house, the kegs roll in;
the party flips its switches down.

When drunk comes, it comes as sound,
a chord, a liftoff. I ride the rim,
dear sip, dear shotgun, dear pound.

He could be anyone, and he...
Love
Desire & Passion
Living
The Mind
Activities
Eating & Drinking
Verse Forms
Villanelle
Joy & Contentment
+ 2 more
Not Pastoral Enough
By Veronica Forrest-Thomson
It is the sense, it is the sense, controls,
Landing every poem like a fish.
Unhuman forms must not assert their roles.

Glittering scales require the deadly tolls
Of net and knife. Scales fall to relish.
It is the sense, it is the sense, controls.

Yet...
Arts & Sciences
Poetry & Poets
Verse Forms
Villanelle
Disappointment
His and Hers
By Diane Gilliam Fisher
She cannot imagine it otherwise.
She wakes in the morning and twists her ring,
loves how every night in their bed he lies

breathing warm in the dark and never shies
away. He lets her talk, he lets her sing.
She cannot imagine it otherwise.

One...
Love
Heartache & Loss
Realistic & Complicated
Relationships
Men & Women
Verse Forms
Villanelle
Stanza Forms
Rhymed Stanza
Techniques
Refrain
Blame
Disappointment
+ 6 more
Nursery
By Kiki Petrosino
We opened the door to the fairy house
& took our tea on matching pebble seats.
Somehow we got out of there alive

though something crystalline of us
remains in that dark, growing its facets.
We opened the door to the fairy house

at the oak’s...
Living
Coming of Age
Life Choices
Youth
Relationships
Friends & Enemies
Mythology & Folklore
Fairy-tales & Legends
Verse Forms
Villanelle
Anxiety & Insecurity
Blame
+ 5 more
After the Dinner Party
By Adrienne Su
Dropping napkins, corks, and non-compostables
into the trash, I see that friends have mistaken
my everyday chopsticks for disposables,

helpfully discarding them alongside inedibles:
pork bones, shrimp shells, bitter melon.
Among napkins and corks, they do look compostable:

off-white, wooden, warped from continual
washing — no lacquer, no ornament....
Living
Life Choices
Relationships
Friends & Enemies
Home Life
Activities
Eating & Drinking
Verse Forms
Villanelle
Blame
Gratitude
+ 4 more
The Freaks at Spurgin Road Field
By Richard Hugo
The dim boy claps because the others clap.
The polite word, handicapped, is muttered in the stands.
Isn’t it wrong, the way the mind moves back.

One whole day I sit, contrite, dirt, L.A.
Union Station, ’46, sweating through last night.
The dim boy claps...
Living
Relationships
Home Life
Activities
Sports & Outdoor Activities
Arts & Sciences
Philosophy
Verse Forms
Villanelle
Blame
Disappointment
Grief
+ 5 more
My Darling Turns to Poetry at Night
By Anthony Lawrence
My darling turns to poetry at night.
What began as flirtation, an aside
Between abstract expression and first light

Now finds form as a silent, startled flight
Of commas on her face — a breath, a word ...
My darling turns to poetry at night.

When rain inspires...
Love
Desire & Passion
Realistic & Complicated
Living
Life Choices
The Mind
Relationships
Home Life
Men & Women
Arts & Sciences
Poetry & Poets
Verse Forms
Villanelle
Joy & Contentment
+ 7 more
Lullaby in Fracktown
By Lilace Mellin Guignard
Child, when you’re sad put on your blue shoes.
You know that Mama loves you lollipops
and Daddy still has a job to lose.

So put on a party hat. We’ll play the kazoos
loud and louder from the mountaintop.
Child, when you’re sad put...
Social Commentaries
Class
Money & Economics
Living
Parenthood
Sorrow & Grieving
Relationships
Family & Ancestors
Home Life
Activities
Jobs & Working
Verse Forms
Villanelle
Melancholy & Despair
+ 7 more
Gratuitous Oranges
By David Shapiro
Nothing rhymes in English with an orange.
It stands alone, with luster in a far tinge.
It stands alone, and seems to make a star cringe.

On Saturday it’s blue like an orange
Or like a surrealist sight rhyme in a garage.
Nothing rhymes in...
Relationships
Men & Women
Arts & Sciences
Language & Linguistics
Poetry & Poets
Verse Forms
Villanelle
Humor
Sound
By Billy Ramsell
To render the ocean one needs a whole year
with Zoom in freezing fingers on a quarter-mile of coast.
Sound is the one true vocabulary of nature

and not the peacock-palette painters swear
he uses for his best stuff, for his daily disposable frescoes.
To...
Nature
Seas, Rivers, & Streams
Living
Time & Brevity
Arts & Sciences
Music
Verse Forms
Villanelle
Disappointment
+ 2 more
The Waking
By Theodore Roethke
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...
Nature
Living
The Body
Time & Brevity
Verse Forms
Villanelle

p1Villanelle with a Line Borrowed from Bishop

p1After Roethke

p1Out Walking

p1Daedal

p1Letter to My Blackout

p1Nursery

p1After the Dinner Party

p1My Darling Turns to Poetry at Night

p1Lullaby in Fracktown

p1Gratuitous Oranges

p1Sound

Villanelle with a Line Borrowed from Bishop

After Roethke

Out Walking

Daedal

Letter to My Blackout

Nursery

After the Dinner Party

My Darling Turns to Poetry at Night

Lullaby in Fracktown

Gratuitous Oranges

Sound