Villanelle Syllabus Craft of Poetry Home Villanelles are a nightmare; there is no other way to say it. The form is originally French and didn't appear in English until the later 1800's. It is 19 lines long, but only uses two rhymes, while also repeating two lines throughout the poem. The first five stanzas are triplets, and the last stanza is a quatrain such that the rhyme scheme is as follows: ...

Poems by Theodore Roethke and Elizabeth Bishop By Robert Hass August 9, 1998 A reader from Maryland writes to ask where the villanelle came from. I looked it up: a very old Italian folk song form brought into medieval French poetry and then brought into English by poets at the end of the 19th century. It is based on an intricate rhyme scheme and a schematic repetition of key lines. The effect is ...