Dream (Red)

She walks the streets in dreams she read,
My love, a sweet song on her lips,
And all the love-sick skies fall dead.

I heard the whisper-things she said
As I lay in my sleep-eclipse:
She walks the streets in dreams she read.

Her shawl won't billow fiery red
Except for when my memory slips
And all the love-sick skies fall dead.

But in her wake the shadows fled
And hid like lurking deep-wrecked ships.
She walks the streets in dreams she read.

She follows where her story led -
The fairy footpath bucks and dips
And all the love-sick skies fall dead.

And I await her in her bed
While in my dream the candle drips:
She walks the streets in dreams she read
And all the love-sick skies fall dead.

Background

This poem is part of a series of Dream poems I wrote around the end of last year. In case you're wondering, the she in the poem isn't actually anyone. Well, I don't think so, anyway, probably more of a composite - you might have noticed that I haven't dedicated this poem to anyone. It's one of my favourites of the things that I've done.

Technically

This is the first villanelle I wrote which actually worked, in my opinion. The way a villanelle works is like this:

AbÀ abA abÀ abA abÀ abAÀ

That is, there are two rhymes (a and b) and two repeating lines which rhyme with the first set (A and À), usually called refrains. The structure is always as I've shown it above - a series of five three-line stanzas (tercets being the technical name - triplet implies they all rhyme together) in which the first establishes the two refrains and the remaining ones alternate between them - historically, the usual metre was iambic tetrameter, but mostly people use pentameter now. Finally a quatrain ending in both refrains together gives some kind of resolution.

Writing in forms usually involves constraints - saying what you want to say within a fixed number of syllables to the line, within a certain rhyme scheme, within a limited number of lines and stanzas. The villanelle effectively takes these constraints and turns them up to eleven, making you expound your vision with the constant interruption of some lines from earlier (that you have to make sense of in a variety of contexts) inside two sodding rhymes. I mean, pick "I found inside a Spanish orange / A tiny man, whose name was Gorringe" and you're pretty well sunk.

Given the ridiculously tight constraints of the villanelle (next to the old dressing gown of the ode and the skinny jeans of the sonnet it's practically one of those corsets that squashes the air out of your chest and your chest into a shape that's probably not much good for your internal organs) you might wonder why you'd bother at all with something so fussy - but instead of trying to convince you by rambling on about the dream-like or obsessive quality the repetition can produce, or the sense of satisfaction of seeing the two squabbling refrains finally end up together after exploring every permutation of being apart, I'm just going to reproduce my favourite villanelle, possibly my favourite poem and certainly one of the best examples of the form.

"I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan's men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you'd return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)"

Links

That was "Mad Girl's Love Song" by Sylvia Plath. I found it here. It is a rare thing to be able to turn anguish into such beautiful and timeless lines without somehow trivialising it (I think).

The other great example of the villanelle, for my money, is "Do Not Go Gentle Into that Good Night" by Dylan Thomas. Where Sylvia Plath's piece shows obsession and heartbreak with searing clarity, Dylan Thomas (with no less emotional charge) explores the grammatical acrobatics and progressing thought process - unlike Plath's repeated, tortured whimper "(I think I made you up inside my head.)" his second refrain "Rage, rage against the dying of the light" fires the poem forward.

Or at least I think so. I'm worried that doing a literature degree is turning me into a literary critic. Ugh. Maybe I'm just out of practice at this whole blog thing. Anyway, I expect I'm going to talk more about the Dream theme when I post the other poems in it.

I thought it'd be more useful not to link to Wikipedia again (I assume you'll have a look at the page on villanelles if you're interested), so I'm linking to this ebook on them (called "Refrain Again: The Return of the Villanelle", by Amanda French), specifically the section on the form's history. For the record, there are far more modern English examples than Medieval French ones, regardless of how lazy textbook writers like to describe it as a revived Medieval form.

Oh, it's nice to be back.