Audio:
Guess what! This was translated into French (unbenownst to me). How apropos. Now this vile poem can afflict the selfsame nation that afflicted us with the Villanelle. You can see the original here. Or click below:
Chaque fois que la cloche appelait les fidèles,
Don ou malédiction, persécution (je crois),
Elle nous pondait une horreur de villanelle.
C’était ainsi depuis l’école maternelle,
Y introduisant tous les clichés à la fois,
Chaque fois que la cloche appelait les fidèles.
Aimant se confesser, française jouvencelle,
Sitôt qu’elle voyait le loup au coin du bois,
Elle nous pondait une horreur de villanelle.
Toutes les vérités à dire ne sont belles,
Mais elle les disait, en toute bonne foi,
Chaque fois que la cloche appelait les fidèles.
Quand le prêtre disait, de façon bien formelle,
De partir en faisant le signe de la croix,
Elle nous pondait une horreur de villanelle.
Pierre en enfer l’envoie pour sa vie éternelle,
Mais le diable cria “Que fait-elle chez moi?”
Chaque fois que la cloche appelait les fidèles,
Elle nous pondait une horreur de villanelle.
by Thunderbird
This made me chuckle. I loved it.
Thanks Monty! I thought I’d get more comments out of this… but haven’t. So yours is especially appreciated.
Love it !!!!
Thanks!
I’ll comment. It’s charming, I’m forwarding it to several people right away. Glad to begin Friday with this :)
Thanks Delphine!
I’ve always detested Villanelles. ;-) But felt like I had to at least write one.
You may have always detested them, but you handle the form well. I particularly like the line: “From the the very day she learned to spell / She wrote the irretrievably cliche’d”. True satire finds its strength in a firm grasp of its victim.
You might like http://fuchse.wordpress.com/2010/11/12/catching-the-rhyme/. There’s one by Ezra Rothko on the same site too.
Do you hate the great villanelles too – Sylvia Plath’s “I think I made you up inside my head”, for example? Or the one about losing things by Elizabeth Bishop?
“Hate” may be too strong a word… maybe. :-)
I jest. Sort of.
There are a handful of great ones. But a Villanelle is pure gasoline. It and most poets (who play with it) go up in flames. I wonder if there are also great limericks?
//How do you think Shakespeare, Milton, Marlowe or Keats would respond to some of your poems?//
I dreamed that I met Robert Frost. We were in Hanover, New Hampshire and sitting at a sidewalk cafe. He gave a handful of my poems a cursory glance and said he owed they had a few good words. And that was that.
//You write about an anonymous housewife? Why not about a homely woman like the mother of what well-known person in history?//
Because I write what’s in the heart. Because a name means less to me than the heart. Because I’m anonymous and everyone I know and love is anonymous.
You are too much in love with fame — too much enamored by the finger that points to the moon.