Only Words

First real attempt at villanelle form.

Empty words to a careful daughter

These relations are, a twisted trope:
Our blood runs thinner than water

Apologies inked by an apathetic author
Staining pillowcases with false hope
Empty words to a careful daughter

Lead her through life, guide with a halter
Then a diamond ring to silence, till her soil, sow
a new beginning. Flood the seeds with water.

Hush little baby, place the gifts on the alter
Then, murder the mockingbird, dog, and billy goat
Watch the blood run thin, like water

I’ll travel through city, country--and broader
I’ll break through this soiled earth, then, steadily grow
beyond those empty words for a careful daughter.

Sent your herd, like sheep, to slaughter
I’ll try to forget, but will always know:
Those empty words for a careful daughter,
That blood runs thinner than water.

Reviews

[imagwriteine]

To me, all the cruelty resembles how little children are coaxed, and deceived, in order to give them a sense of security, and maintain their own innocence. But as they grow, they start to realize that the world is not what they would like it to be, what they were told it was to be. And layers and layers of lies start to crumble, consequently innocence is lost and they are exposed to the cold reality.

I absolutely love the imagery and how the piece leaves room for imagination, very well done :)

(Actually this is the most uniform piece I have ever read on this website, your craft is amazing)

[Maddie Reiss]

I love hearing what other people interpret, that's why I don't like to include anything about meaning in the descriptions when I post poems. I feel like I get meaning from my own writing I might not have seen before!

I love the way you read it. I wrote it based on an absent father and daughter's relationship, but what you said about children and the "false security" to maintain innocence is 100% relevant and also exists there too. Thanks for the review!!

[James Hanna-Magill]

Dear Maddie

I found you on the Writers to Watch list and then discovered on your page this little gem.

I am going to cut my usual form of review and abbreviate it to focus on some key points.

Form: 'The Villanelle'

There are as many writers as there are forms.

But you certainly do the necessary:

1) Six stanzas, the first five tercets and the sixth a quatrain;
2) In each of the tercets, there is an abiding rhyme (in your case) of aba and that aba you follow all the way through the five tercets into the final quatrain where your last two lines are a rhyming couplet.

More in a minute!

Accomplished!

Meter: There is no fixed meter for this form and actually you do not seek to find one. Or rather there is no fixed meter I can find. Those two statements differ.

In Villanelle as established in time there is often no fixed meter as here. But in the past a meter has been applied by some poets in Trimeter, Tetrameter and Pentameter.

Perhaps the most well known of this type of poetry, have been written by Dylan Thomas and Sylvia Plath or at least they are my favourites. The fact that I am Irish but live in Wales now, Dylan Thomas' homeland is neither here or there.The fact that Sylvia Plath was bipolar as I am and committed suicide is neither here nor there either! Or is it? There is of course an immediate connection with both for me! Both wrote this form in Iambic Pentameter.

For the record, here is the first tercet of their versions:

DO NOT GO GENTLE INTO THAT GOOD NIGHT (Dylan Thomas):

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

MAD GIRL'S LOVE SONG (Sylvia Plath)

'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)'

But if you watch carefully what they do, they differ. Dylan Thomas's middle lines always rhyme consistently as you do here but Sylvia Plath's don't. But Elizabeth Bishop's do in 'One Art.'

But you also ( however only limitedly) follow a method that both Dylan Thomas and Sylvia Plath do, which is the first line of the first tercet is repeated in the last line of the second tercet. They more or less do the same by skipping a tercet and repeating the line all the way through. You do not do that.

I suppose in the end a Villanelle is almost what you want to make it. There are so many variants.

So what I have I just told you? Nothing much. I am sure you already know what I have just said. But that is not necessarily so for anyone watching. And I think at times it important to show what a gifted writer like you is actually achieving by reference to the past in fixed form

3) Meaning? To whom? To me? To others on this site? To your mum? To your next door neighbour? Just as with emotional impact in 5 below, it all depends on who is reading you. All reactions are individual and personal.

My take in one sentence? The intensity of a mother daughter relationship through the vagaries of life. Does that cut it? And do you retain that meaning within that form? In my opinion yes!

4) Use of English and Metaphor / simile / analogy:

Look there is so much I could trot out here. This poem is an explosion of sensation and carefully crafted.

Had I to, I would just repeat the poem back to you. So favourite lines? Two:

'Lead her through life, guide with a halter
Then a diamond ring to silence, till her soil, sow
a new beginning. Flood the seeds with water.' [hugely suggestive]

and

'Hush little baby, place the gifts on the alter
Then, murder the mockingbird, dog, and billy goat
Watch the blood run thin, like water' [heavily metaphorical]

5) Right 5 and to end, perhaps what poetry or any writing is all about. The individual emotional reaction of each reader.

But look I am going to cut it to one of so many. Your title 'Only Words' before I get anywhere sets me off into my childhood and the days of the Beegees, my favourite pop band in youth (apart from ELO) and their song 'Words' where in the refrain they pick up the same lines 'It's only words'. This song may be as far from the intent of your poem as you imagine, but as soon as I read the title, a bomb goes off in my head. And of course you pick up a similar notion that only words are empty words perhaps?

You are talented.

Enough said?

Good review? Bad review? My review!

I hope you find something of benefit or interest in MY WORDS.

In all kindness

James

[James Hanna-Magill]

PS BY the way if you are interested to see my connection, here is a link to the Bee Gees song 'Words:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkqwRC23HN8

[Misery]

Another wonderful offering. Keep sharing your inspirations, dear poet.

[Nicki]

Wow! I just read another of your poems and thought I would look at more. You are very talented! I loved this poem! I like how you can carry certain themes throughout the poems in a way that's subtle, yet very significant!