I'm Maggie Smith, and this is The Slowdown.

As poets, we have so many poetic forms to choose from, and some are fussier than others.

By that, I mean some have more rules for the writer to follow.

We could choose to write in free verse all the time, with no rules, and plenty of poets

do mostly that, myself included. But there is also a specific rigor and pleasure to working

in a received form, to being creative within those constraints.

It's a kind of puzzle that you both build and solve.

The Villanelle is one of those puzzles, a highly structured form.

It's made up of six stanzas, five tersets with three lines each, and a final quatrain

with four lines. But what makes the Villanelle instantly recognizable and arguably fussy are its use

of repetition and rhyme. The Villanelle has two refrains,

or lines that repeat in specific places, plus a rigid rhyme scheme. There is one end rhyme that

carries through lines one and three of each tertiary, plus lines

one, three, and four in the final quatrain. There is a second end rhyme that carries through

the middle line of each terseet, plus line two in the final quatrain.

Elizabeth Bishop's one art might be my personal favorite Villanelle, but the most famous poem written in the form is likely Dylan Thomas's,

do not go gentle into that good night,

with its two refrains, do not go gentle into that good night, with its two refrains, do not go gentle into that good night,

and rage, rage against the dying of the light.

The multiple repetitions and the circular nature of the Villanelle make it a good form for poems that grapple with an insistent memory,

an unresolved emotion, or a feeling of being trapped. But the form can be a container

for any kind of subject matter in which repetition feels essential. So much of life is repetition

...