lytefoot:copperbadge:sandrayln:copperbadge:not-your-lawyer:copperbadge:copperbadge:I thought today a
lytefoot:copperbadge:sandrayln:copperbadge:not-your-lawyer:copperbadge:copperbadge:I thought today about a villanelleI had an inspiration there and thenI wrote this in a spreadsheet in ExcelIt’s hard to keep the poems rigid shellOn track inside my mind, so whenI thought today about a villanelleI thought about refrains re-rung like bellsAnd how simple it might be to begin;I wrote this in a spreadsheet in ExcelThe line below these two, I brag to tellIs simply coded as =A1 I thought today about a villanelleAnd this stanza’s refrain, I needn’t spellIt out; it equals A3 and is done!I wrote this in a spreadsheet in ExcelI planned to use this better, really sellThe bit; but flew too closely to the sun. I thought today about a villanelleI wrote this in a spreadsheet in Excel[Description: The above text is pictured in individual cells in column A of an Excel spreadsheet. The sheet’s title in the workbook is “Sheet Two Villanelle” and to prove the truth of how it was constructed, Cell A23 is selected; at the top of the image you can see that it does not actually contain any text, but just the Excel formula “=A1″. This is probably Art, somehow.] I have to say that I genuinely love how the reblogs on this are 45% poetry nerds, 45% Killing Eve fandom, and 10% Excel wonks. This is exactly the literature:fandom:programming ratio I desire in my life. OP where was this helpful humor when I needed to write a villanelle last semester. It’s good to do it manually the first time, so you appreciate automation! You know. It’s taken me to this point in seeing this on my dash to realize that a) this is not an attempt to filk “Hallelujah” and b) it’s an actual poetry style.*facepalm* Well challenge acceptedI thought today of a villanelleAnd then I opened up ExcelAnd had a truly holy inspirationFor it goes, in main, A, B, refrainThe second verse remains the sameExcept the refrain changes situationVillanelles areVillanelles areVillanelles areHard to writeBut when you put a villanelleIn to some cells within ExcelIt definitely needs no demonstrationLet every third line equal A;A one or three, and then awayDown at the bottom a remediationAB refrainAB refrainAB refrainAB refrain, refrainI don’t know how to end the songIt’s gone on now a little longBut if you and Cohen had a conversationHe’d tell you his had dozens more Of verses down the years, thereforeA couple more won’t be a tribulationVillanelle yeahVillanelle yeahVillanelle yeahVillanelle yeah… There are three things I really have to wonder:At this point, what proportion of villanelles being written are actually about the act of writing a villanelle?Historically, the villanelle has been seen as a form to be used for poems about pain and struggle. (E.g. “Do not go gentle into that good night.”) Admittedly, a poem about writing a villanelle absolutely fits into this category, but is this meta tendency pushing the villanelle into a form for light verse? Is this part of the larger cultural trend (in American literature at least) to view tightly-rhymed and tightly-metered verse as somehow childish and silly? And how does this reflect on the larger trend away from tightly wrought language in general?Have people have written villanelles about the character Villanelle? I’m sure someone has, because fandom is a big space, but I’m also sure there should be more of them.Anyway, I’m also going to drop this here for your amusement. -- source link