ACTIVITY: Write a Villanelle

This week, we learned how to write a villanelle. You can read instructions from last year, do your own internet answer quest, or look at our results below.

that fluttery birdy-bird feeling that's love

that fluttery birdy-bird feeling that's love
or whatever it is somewhere somehow dot dot dot
rains down every never-ending incessant sometimes

in such and such a season without reason
without wings or wishes or whatnot
that fluttery birdy-bird feeling that's love

above all big and tall tediums and mediums
or even a little itsy-bitsy teeny tiny small knot
rains down every never-ending incessant sometimes

and whew     it's not enough     i need more
all the time     i'm fine     how are you not
that fluttery birdy-bird feeling that's love

or another language     it's where we live
and what we are and what we thought
rains down every never-ending incessant sometimes

and in some way we fly or cry or hold on
or let go of it when we have fought
that fluttery birdy-bird feeling that's love
rains down every never-ending incessant sometimes

Writing Activity: Compose a Villanelle

Attendance has been small recently, but the few of us who show up still play with language and still wish you were here...

This week's writing activity highlights a form of poetry that we have tried  each of the past few years: the villanelle. Here's a famous example by Elizabeth Bishop:

Read more about Elizabeth
Bishop on Wikipedia.

One Art

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster

of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:

places, and names, and where it was you meant 
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or

next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,

some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

–Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture

I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master

though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

Hide and Seek!

واحد، اثنان، ثلاثة، اربعة، خمسة [1]

Eyes closed tight, face against a palm tree

حلال دم الغزال [2]

Footsteps I heard, running away.

Wings flapped above my head.

واحد، اثنان، ثلاثة، اربعة، خمسة

I'll search the farm for siblings and cousins

A giggle here, a whisper there

حلال دم الغزال

Cracking of sticks behind a tanoor[3]

A rustle in the fields

واحد، اثنان، ثلاثة، اربعة، خمسة

Footprints by the river

An impatient head sticking out of hiding

حلال دم الغزال

I'll find them all, as I always do.

Run to catch one, call out "you are it!"

واحد، اثنان، ثلاثة، اربعة، خمسة

حلال دم الغزال

---

[1] One, two, three, four, five.

[2] Ready or not, here I come.

[3] An oven for making bread made of clay.

We Could Have That Conversation (a villanelle)

We could have that conversation,
Three of us
In the afternoon silence

Waiting for more rain
At the end of the day.
We could have that conversation

Once upon a time,
That shaped our dreams
In the afternoon silence,

With what noise of a clock,
A footstep, a voice that said
We could have that conversation.

With what do we welcome
The eternity in not knowing?
In the afternoon silence

We didn't. We tried to.
We gathered together and laughed.
We could have that conversation
in the afternoon silence.