Villanelle

Villanelles are lyric poems, which means they are relatively short poems dealing with emotion.

Like sonnets, they have a strict structure.

Villanelles have a lyrical quality to them, creating a song-like poem with their structured lines.


Villanelles concentrate on dissecting themes of love, loss and challenge.



The Villanelle is a 19 line poem with two repeated rhymes and two refrains. They’re made up of 5 tercets (stanzas with 3 lines) and 1 quatrain at the end. 

A villanelle is a 19-line poem, made up of five tercets and a concluding quatrain. Lines may be of any length, but are often written in iambic pentameter and follow an ABA rhyme scheme. 

The villanelle also employs line repetition. The first line of the first stanza is repeated as the last line in the second and fourth stanzas, and as the penultimate line in the final quatrain. The third line of the first stanza is repeated as the last line in the third and fifth stanzas, and as the last line in the final quatrain.

1. Length: A villanelle is 19 lines broken up into five tercets (three-line stanzas), with the sixth stanza containing four lines. When it comes to the individual lines, there isn’t a specific length or meter, though many poets like to use iambic pentameter.
2. Rhyme scheme: Each tercet of a villanelle’s rhyme scheme contains an ABA rhyme scheme, except for the final stanza, which follows an ABAA rhyme scheme.
3. Repetition: The first line of the first stanza is a refrain line that gets reused throughout the poem. It is the same as the last line of the second and fourth stanza, as well as the penultimate line of the last stanza. The third line of the poem serves as the last line of the third stanza, fifth stanza, and final stanza. This means that many of the lines of your villanelle have already been written after you’ve completed the first stanza.
4. Ending: The last stanza is a final quatrain, ending with a couplet (which means the final line of this stanza should rhyme with the one before it).

Villanelles concentrate on dissecting themes of love, loss and challenge.

The structure and rhyme scheme of the villanelle is as follows:

A1
B
A2

A
B
A1

A
B
A2

A
B
A1

A
B
A2

A
B
A1
A2

Contemporary poets have not limited themselves to pastoral themes

Villanelles concentrate on dissecting themes of love, loss and challenge.

Villanelles concentrate on dissecting themes of love, loss and challenge.

https://www.litkicks.com/PoeticForms

https://www.masterclass.com/articles/how-to-write-a-villanelle#what-is-a-villanelle

https://blogasenglish.wordpress.com/2015/11/26/genetics-revision-notes/