Villanelle Blog: Tennis Anyone?

I'm a sports guy. There's no denying it. So when I can, I try to attribute things we learn in class to aspects of sport in order to better understand them. In this video, tennis players Andy Murray and Novak Djokovic are locked in an intense rally during a match that lasts more than 40 shots. Most of these shots are not new tricks, but rather the same set of motions in a repetitive style or pattern. Even though Murray would eventually win the point, the crowd (or in the case of villanelles, audience) erupts in a chorus of cheers and awes for both players, in which a wonderful display of skill has occurred when the ball only traveled a net distance of 78 feet. My point? Villanelles are essentially a poetic form of tennis or other confined games in which certain aspects (like different tennis strokes and the flight pattern of the ball) are repeated to generate a unique style and hopefully create a roar from the audience similar to the one after a tennis rally. Possibly the best way to evaluate the villanelles, as mentioned in the introductory excerpt, is the type of connection which they establish with the audience. So, essentially, I'm going to be analyzing the three poems in terms of the kind of roar and awe they can provide us, the audience, even inside the strict confines of the villanelle structure.

Let's start off with the poem I think does the best job of exemplifying the form of the villanelle. "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night" by Dylan Thomas is superior to the others in terms of both of it's ability to form a connection with the audience while maintaining a circular (no end in sight) kind of form.

Beginning with the audience component, we can clearly see a specifically targeted audience in Thomas's poem whereas in the other two, we cannot. Lines like "Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight" (line 10) identify a sense of rugged glory to which certain groups of people can relate to. This sort of targeting seems nonexistent in the other two poems. And while they do make certain references to common things like "Great Nature" (Roethke line 13), the unifying sense of a specifically targeted audience just doesn't seem to be there. It would be like playing a tennis match in front of a bunch of random people, most of whom have no familiarity or affinity for the sport, unlike the video where you have several thousand wild tennis maniacs.

In addition, we must consider the circular aspect of villanelles. Once again, I argue that Thomas is superior on this front as well. This is mainly due to the impact and repetition of key verbs that indicate a cycle arguably more fierce than the other two combined. The words "rage" and "blaze" obviously indicate the vicious struggle between light and dark, a conflict discussed thoroughly throughout literature and poetry. However, because Thomas is able to effectively display the struggle even through the arguably ridiculous parameters of the villanelle is what puts it on a raised pedestal above the other two poems.