Strength of Spirit...my first Villanelle...How can I improve it?

Question

Strength of Spirit (if you can think of a more fitting Title...?)

Cleave not, tempest, to my wistful brain.

Fair thoughts should nourish a wholesome mind.

Fight; take flight from the falling of the rain.

Through willful despite does happiness feign

with apocryphal airs and strength refined.

Cleave not, tempest, to my wistful brain

Though ardent fortitude at last did wane;

as a shattered spirit becomes confined.

Fight; take flight from the falling of the rain.

Swelling melancholy sodden with pain

will not acquiesce to thoughts maligned

Cleave not, tempest, to my wistful brain

Curse all ill affect and unwelcome reign.

Let hope illuminate dark thoughts that blind.

Fight; take flight from the falling of the rain

Through love and kindness fair thoughts we attain

Seek solace in the souls of all mankind.

Cleave not, tempest, to my wistful brain.

Fight; take flight from the falling of the rain.

Criteria:http://www.elfwood.com/farp/thewriting/27brianforms/27brianforms.html#villanelle

Answer 1

This was absolutely delicious!

Answer 2

I'm glad to see you're writing again--I know how those dry periods can be. The Villanelle is a very fun form. The strength of it is in the refrain. I really enjoyed this part of it:

Fight; take flight from the falling of the rain.

and your rhyme with reign and rain was very clever.

I have to make myself engage with the older sense of the language, but all-in-all, it was a really enjoyable poem.

You did exellent work--(honestly outstanding for a first effort).

Edit: I like the new ending better. You may want to consider removing the comma and changing the "a" to an "in" with the new endings first line.

Answer 3

I love archaic syntax. And I love your poetry; I'm always learning something new through you--thanks. You da awesome-est. I have no helpful insights on how to improve this piece--I say leave it as is.

Answer 4

As the P's of M reactionary, I must say I love it with all my heart. If I ever get a moment again, I must continue the one I began about a month ago.

Answer 5

I think your title is perfect...I keep learning new forms of poetry I didn't even know existed.

Answer 6

This thing has brains everywhere...hehehe.

Very good.

Answer 7

Which century did you morph from? lol  This definitely has the spirit strong, beset by outside forces and thoughts.  The repetition does really add to the impact.  Very well done o damsel of the 18th century (spirit only!)

Answer 8

It is only a little bit stiff. For a first effort that is high praise indeed. This is a demanding and difficult form. It requires a commitment to spending time and effort. If this is any indication of your potential, I say it's worth the effort. My suggestion would be to abandon the XVIII Century style and try more modern language. I am impressed, I could never do this well.

Answer 9

I like the new ending; it is much more introspective and very concordant.

For the new ending: I am a little bit quizzical about some of the metre.  However, this is a French form and I've always been very conflicted about how or if to try to render French syllabic lines in English.

I am very sorry that I deleted the original; I was beginning to edit it in order to make the note less garrulous, because for me writing is very much an exploratory process, and I felt that it showed too much.  I replaced the note with a stub because I was called away unexpectedly, but if I had more presence of mind I would have pasted back the original.  Please do not think I thought for a minute that the thumb-down was yours; I know better than that.  I thank you for your kind comments; here is the original again:

Like most villanelles, I found this one quite a challenge to understand at first.  However, it is technically innovative in addressing its refrains separately: the first outward, to the tempest, the second inward to the self.  This gives the poem a sense of motion through logical thesis/ antithesis/ synthesis in alternating stanzas, which many poems in this form do not achieve, causing them to stagnate (as does, perhaps deliberately, the one in the novel by James Joyce).  The two refrains of the famous villanelle by Dylan Thomas express annoyingly identical ideas, for example; each of your refrains borrows respectively from the tones of each of his, I think, but engage throughout the poem in a rhetorically more sophisticated counterpoint.  

The ending is to me nevertheless somewhat dissatisfying, because there is no premonition of other souls in the first five rather solipsistic stanzas, and the tempest is thus so impersonal a menace that love, kindness, and solace seem to be an intrusion from another world.  `Fair thoughts' are known only through their absence in the refrain, and while I love the implied pun on `fair weather,' this compounds the sense that this line is mere negation of the tempest, lacking generative powers of its own.  So too is `hope,' a line which trades specificity for the picturesque.  True warmth, it seems, only exists in the first stanza, `nourish a wholesome mind,' but as neither of the two strains of metaphors this opens is pursued (agricultural, via rain, and intellectual, via mind; wholesome in both cases) these ideas are from the beginning extinguished.

I think some of the other difficulty in reading this poem comes from what I might call your coyness in not emphasising some of the poem's most interesting or important ideas.  For example, it seems that the psychology of the poem hinges around the fight/flight paradox boldly espoused by the second refrain, yet in some ways the poem is so dense that even a paradox in the refrain is easy to miss, or perhaps comes across as comical.  Stanza three uses prolepsis and two-part parallel structure to express, not a parallel pair, but in fact a sequence of four ideas: fortitude which was, by turns: ardent > shattered > confined > waning.  This is a psychologically important series of causations that requires a lot of unpacking.  Similarly, `affect' and `reign' are both technically intransitive verbs used in the infinitive as nouns with a shared implied indirect object (`over the mind'); while perfectly correct, this highly elliptical usage seems to read as an obscure kenning.  I realise my own attempts are worse, of course-- but then I hope I am qualified, if not authorised, to complain.  I loved `swellign melancholy sodden with pain--' almost every line seems allegorically suffused with the rain.

Finally, `wistful' in the first refrain is perhaps not terribly helpful read against the rest of the poem, while `brain' is somewhat comic when read against the archaic diction.  Cleave is only a half-appropriate verb for the subject and object, so it is possible that the poem begins on the wrong foot.  The first two lines of the second stanza are not quite a satisfying sentence-- feign has an implied direct object (`despite' is the indirect object), but I cannot actually guess what it is.  `Apochryphal airs' is as obtuse as `strength refined' is beautiful; but the former is very costly in syllables.

So in the end, to answer the question, if it is not impertinent I would consider considering two (oops, four) ideas, if I have not misread:

1) Maybe hollow out stanza two a little bit, if possible, to make the tempest metaphor more explicit.

2) Perhaps gradually find a way to introduce some germs of love and kindness into, perhaps, stz. 4-5, perhaps by explicit absence, to make it less of a shock in stanza 6.

3) I don't know if this is possible, but perhaps the refrains can be written to make the psychology of the poem more clear on the surface, without changing the rhymes.

4) Perhaps there is a way to rephrase the comparison of stanza three with a stronger sense of cause-and-effect, or else perhaps a simpler comparison exists for almost the same idea.

It is possible that I have totally misread your poem, for which I apologise in advance.  The poem clearly rewards rereading, and despite being dense, it is definitely open to being enjoyed.

Answer 10

Wow. I can only picture standing in a cathedral with the thunder clashing outside, realizing the truth of the moment, the strength within one's ownself. I believe "Strength of Spirit" is an exceedingly fitting title.

The sound of this is arcane and exquisite, as I read hymns rang with perfect clarity, Gregorian chants in the rafters of the aforesaid cathedral.

I once tried the villanelle...and failed miserably. So thank you, for showing me it can be done. Maybe I'll attempt it once more. Thank you, Sptfyr.