Hold head high within a cage,
Or look down as I soar through the sky,
Be a man or be free?
On the sight of oppression I rage,
Scream and bleed, I’d rather die,
Than to hold head high within a cage.
But I wish I could meet a mage
With his white dazzling magic, clarify,
To be a man or be free?
My responsibilities, I carefully gauge,
To fulfill them, with all might, I try,
To hold head high within a cage.
But it’s not an easy war to wage,
The rusting cage runs my soul dry,
I ponder again, be a man or be free?
I am in need of the skills of an old sage
To let go of the dream right before my eye.
All this to hold head high within a false cage!
Neither being a man nor be free!
~
Writing a villanelle is like an adventure, you never know what you come up with until you write the last word. Most of my poems are that way, anyway! I changed the restraining lines a bit to fit the specific tercets.
For those of you who don’t know what villanelle is – villanelle (also known as villanesque)[1] is a nineteen-line poetic form consisting of five tercets followed by a quatrain.
And the link to Wikipedia.
Part of my #The100DaysOfPoetryLearning project. You can read all of my poems here.
Loved it as always! 🙂
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Thank you!
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My pleasure 🙂
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Do you find that as you work with a form like the Villanelle it causes you to dig deep to find the exactly right word because of the restraints of the rhyme and meter? This has a profound message and the voice is so strong. Poem onward!
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Yeah, I feel that way sometimes. The restrains helps me in sometimes, by presenting the choices of rhyming words, I derive my context from there and sometimes the I squeeze the context by extensively researching words. Thank you for reading.
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I like the concept behind this. There’s just one suggestion I’d make, and that’s about your second refrain line, line 3. In classic villanelle, it should rhyme with the first line. Yours doesn’t, and it’s like a loose thread, if you see what I mean. Imagine the poem with that third line rhyming with the first, and you’ll see how it knits the whole thing together. Could you tweak it see how it sounds?
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Thank you so much! I didn’t not know that it was supposed to be like this. I would tweak it and see how it is, but I have a feeling that it could be more delightful that way. Let’s see what I can do. Thank you again, Jane!
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It’s just the way it sounded to me, that if all the tercets rhyme it sounds more balanced. Also you end on a rhyme that sort of finishes things off neatly.
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Yes you are correct! It could be more balanced.
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Write an alternative poem so you can still keep the original. See how it works.
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I’ll definitely! I was planning on playing with different forms of villanelle!
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Good for you 🙂
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