The villanelle

Perhaps it’s because I am more familiar with Bishop’s breezy toned ‘One Art’ than any other villanelle, but I couldn’t really approach writing in the form in an entirely serious fashion.  I know the Bishop poem actually adumbrates a range of human sorrows, from the trivial to the unbearable, but it does so in an idiom of resilience which is almost cheerful: for me, this sticks to the form. 

On the other hand, its circularity makes it a great vehicle for looking at life’s intractabilities: it lends itself to the Sisyphean.  I thought it would be interesting to use the repetition to look at something repetitious, like most people’s experience of work; to be honest, the regular reiteration of particular lines, around and around, directly reminded me of my repeated failure to successfully circumnavigate  Dublin’s myriad roundabouts the last time I tried to learn to drive, and my deep sympathy for my driving instructor, who had to put up with that and similar on an hourly basis, every day…  Like all of these things, the trick is finding fairly adaptable end-words, words which echo through innumerable other words: it almost felt like cheating to use a word like ‘again’ as an end word, given that so many words in English end with that sound.

So here’s my villanelle:

Driving School Villanelle

Second gear, indicate, change lane:

halfway across, this one always stalls.

We go around the roundabout again.

Eleven o’clock’s old dear is all inane

chatter and jumping at mobile calls.

Second gear, indicate, change lane.

Fourth lesson, in the driving rain:

enthusiasm falters, interest palls.

We go around the roundabout again.

After lunch, jerking along, the strain

shows; time and traffic crawls.

Second gear, indicate, change lane.

Four o’clock: today’s last boy’s insane,

brake-shy, he swerves, he swears, he bawls.

We go around the roundabout again.

The Accident’s, I endlessly explain,

a discordance of timidity and balls.

Second gear, indicate, change lane:

we go around the roundabout again.