It seemed to me that if we copied Thomas’ technique of speaking in paired commands, we might write well.  Although I didn’t expect readers to necessarily write tight villanelles as a result of the exercise (I actually suggested repeating the lines throughout an essay), two Writing It Real subscribers sent me the villanelles they’d created as a consequence of the exercise. Inspired by Father’s Day, Mary wrote about parenting rather than about her father:

The Stranger

Be eager to know the stranger in your child.
See his open hand
He will show you who you are.

Waiting in the wings of home
Wandering, walking alone
Be eager to know the stranger in your child

Feel his fear, feel his hope.
See that tear, see that small smile.
He will show you who you are.

Meet his open hand.
Be curious, dig deep, travel together,
Be eager to know the stranger in your child.

Listen to his dreams, his fears
Marvel at his laughter in loneliness
He will show you who you are.

As you hear his words and see his smile
You’ll enter his world; you’ll enter his heart
Be eager to know the stranger in your child;
He will show you who you are.

In June, I posted an instructional exercise article called Writing for Father’s Day.  The exercise in the article was inspired by Welsh poet Dylan Thomas’ famous villanelle entitled “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night.” In the poem, he urges his father not to give in to death too easily.  He does this with two famous lines that appear individually throughout the poem and then at the poem’s end, one after the other: “Do not go gentle into that good night. / Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

It seemed to me that if we copied Thomas’ technique of speaking in paired commands, we might write well.  Although I didn’t expect readers to necessarily write tight villanelles as a result of the exercise (I actually suggested repeating the lines throughout an essay), two Writing It Real subscribers sent me the villanelles they’d created as a consequence of the exercise. Inspired by Father’s Day, Mary wrote about parenting rather than about her father:

enjoy the quiet steady pace of Mary Kurtz’s poem.  I like the idea that the stranger in the child, the part we as parents don’t recognize because it is different than ourselves is the part that we must pay special attention to.  I like being told we must listen for and watch for this part of our children because we will learn who we are by taking the hand of the child we don’t know (or shouldn’t assume we know). I think the last two lines, though using only one command, might provide a valid and useful mantra for parents, something they can repeat until it is ingrained in them:

Be eager to know the stranger in your child;
He will show you who you are.

What I would advise upon revision is for Mary to use details that are particular to her parenting experience to show, rather than tell. I want to know what the tears are shed for, how the loneliness looks, what is in the dreams and what the fears are about.  Mary can share the smile, the tears, the dreams, the fears, the loneliness of the child she is talking about, even some of his words, with specific images.

The more a poet allows particular details to do the work of evoking the qualities the poet is noticing and responding to, the more strongly the poem will make its case.  One way to allow yourself to find the details and images is to imagine an occasion for your writing and let that occasion be a part of the poem.  Right now, although the truth of the poem’s sentiment comes through in the two repeated lines and the way they form an affirmation at the poem’s end, we don’t know why the poet is writing this for parents right now.  What has prompted her to speech? (We may write as a consequence of an exercise, but our result stands alone and within what we create, there must be information about something that has happened to move the speaker to speech.)  Sometimes that occasion is indicated by a title:  Upon Watching My Son In the Evening Light, or After My Son’s Phone Call, or When My Son Grooms His Horse.  Any of these titles provide an occasion or reason for speech—the poet has looked at the child deeply and has something she longs to say.  What she sees—a boy brushing a horse, a boy sitting on the porch, a boy’s hair in the last glow of sunset—can enter the poem as well as what she remembers hearing, tasting, touching and smelling from other moments in the boy’s life.  These details will evoke feelings of love, loneliness, hope, fear and shy happiness.

We mustn’t as poets and writers hesitate to put in particulars.  The more the stories in our poems and essays include particulars, the more both the writer and the reader believe that they are in the story and the more the story becomes experienced by both.

A villanelle allows us to be very tidy with our words. It will be a challenge for Mary to “mess things up” as she revises, but it will pay off. Dylan Thomas writes tightly in the form, but he says things like: “Because their words had forked no lightning,” “Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,” and “Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay.”  I’m not sure I know exactly what frail deeds dancing in a green bay might look like, but the words provide an imaginative way of thinking about human actions.  I like that eyes blaze like meteors.  I think that makes the blaze of the eyes strong and surprising and unreachable, like meteor light in the sky.

The amount of detail does not have to be a lot to make a poem rise to its occasion. I know Mary can come up with the right details for showing fear and hope, tear and smile.  It might take a few days of looking for the details, but images will attach themselves to the words. I know that Mary’s home is on a ranch, and so I think of what she might see in the course of a week:  dew on a wagon wheel, sunlight glinting off the hides of cattle, manes of foals in wind.  I know that what she sees and hears and touches can attach to the feelings the poem presents and deliver the feelings to readers through their senses.

Another Writing It Real subscriber, JoEllen Moldoff, sent me a poem about her father, saying she had wanted to write one about him for quite awhile. She found the command couplet idea facilitated her in writing on the topic of her father.  She strung the commands together into one line:  “Be messy, let your hair grow wild.”  And she repeated that line twice and then altered it a bit twice more.  She put details in the poem that are spare but evoke her father well—accounts, desk, Depression Era boy, Vitalis-tamed hair.  By using these details and countering them with the outdoors where she wants to play, JoEllen evokes the feeling that many of us have had as children, the feeling that a father’s sense of responsibility drains liveliness from his life and his important relationships.

 Be Messy, Let Your Hair Grow Wild

Put down your accounts and come outside.
A world is waiting beyond your desk.
Be messy, let your hair grow wild.

You teach me about life; I am your child.
Rules and sermons.  You never rest.
Be messy, let your hair grow wild.

I want to play ball with you, seek-and-hide,
but you worry over bills. The quest
leaves you weary with accounts.  To be outside

seems frivolous to a Depression boy.  I chide
you behind your back.  How fresh
to want you messy with hair grown wild.

When you’re at the mirror, Vitalis-tamed, I find
you handsome, a Clark Gable, a blessed
hero, settling all accounts, charging outside

for games and laughter, a playful time.
But you’re forever at your desk—
now under grass grown messy and wild,
done with earthly accounts, asleep, outside.

I relish the stanza where the poet decides that her father when most himself with Vitalis controlled hair might suddenly charge outside to settle accounts like a movie character.  It makes the return to the desk (“But you’re forever at your desk…”) more poignant.  As we learn the father never gave in to play and then go further into knowing he is no longer alive, the poet sees him “done with earthly accounts, asleep outside.” The situation will not be remedied, only remembered sadly. The adult daughter looks back and comments on the idea that as much as we stay in control during our lives, in the end, the earth returns us to what we can not control, and we will have wasted something precious if we never give in to play.

Although JoEllen’s poem isn’t in the form of a villanelle, it uses the idea of a “command couplet” well and allows the poet to start speaking, from the title itself.  When JoEllen sent me the exercise result in June, she wrote, “I don’t consider this poem finished yet (whatever that means).  I am giving it some distance for the time being.”  Perhaps the four months that separate writing the poem from seeing it in print will offer JoEllen the distance she requires to see just how much the poem has used specifics to offer the experience of the heart.

The lesson from reading both of these poems that were facilitated by using the idea of command couplets is this:  exercises allow us to tap into emotions we’ve probably been feeling for awhile but have not found a way to write about. By concentrating on fulfilling the exercise, we can find insight, evoke our disappointments and consider our successes. Whether we feel satisfied with the work or not, we will have gotten life down on the page.  We will have written from beginning to end and learned something about what is at the bottom of our heart.