Monthly Archives: November 2016

Poetic Forms: Villanelle

About Villanelles

A villanelle is a French form, originally a song with no fixed form. It evolved into a fixed form, with five three-line stanzas and a final stanza consisting of four lines. treesThere are two repeating rhymes and two refrains:
A1 b A2
a b A1
a b A2
a b A1
a b A2
a b A1 A2

where A1 and A2 are the two refrains (repeated lines) and the letters a and b represent the two repeating rhymes.

A famous Villanelle
Dylan Thomas’s well-known poem, Do not go gentle into that good night, is a villanelle:

Do not go gentle into that good night
Dylan Thomas, 1914 – 1953
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.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

A Villanelle of mine:

Here’s one of mine:

Soldiers’ Villanelle
by Margaret Fieland

Soldiers face death on the field
Outnumbered, yet they do not run
Facing death, they do not yield

Some may say their fate is sealed
Standing there beneath the sun
Soldiers face death on the field

What will be their fate revealed
Falling slowly one by one
Facing death they do not yield

Are there weapons they can wield
Is there hope or is there none
Soldiers face death on the field

By hardship they have been annealed
Today their fate they do not shun
Facing death they do not yield

In the end there is no shield
All lie dead, the battle done
Soldiers face death on the field
Facing death they do not yield

You can read more about villanelles here

Finding Their Voices: Using Language to Build Character









Skye Taylor
Marci Baun
Margaret Fieland
Victoria Chatham
Beverley Bateman
Dr. Bob Rich
Rachael Kosinski
Judith Copek
Helena Fairfax
Rhobin Courtright
A.J. Maguire


Poetic forms: Ghazal

What is a Ghazal?

A ghazal is poem with at least five and no more than fifteen (rhyming) couples with a repeated rhyme, typically on the theme of love. In Arabic, there is a set meter; In English, meter is not imposed, though the lines are meant to be the same length. The stanzas are meant to be autonomous, and typically there is a refrain. In the following poem, by Agha Shahid Ali, the refrain is “in real time.”



A well-known Ghazal


Feel the patient’s heart

Pounding—oh please, this once—

I’ll do what I must if I’m bold in real time.
A refugee, I’ll be paroled in real time.

Cool evidence clawed off like shirts of hell-fire?
A former existence untold in real time …

What longing, O Yaar, is controlled in real time?

Each syllable sucked under waves of our earth—
The funeral love comes to hold in real time!

They left him alive so that he could be lonely—
The god of small things is not consoled in real time.

Please afterwards empty my pockets of keys—
It’s hell in the city of gold in real time.

God’s angels again are—for Satan!—forlorn.
Salvation was bought but sin sold in real time.

And who is the terrorist, who the victim?
We’ll know if the country is polled in real time.

“Behind a door marked DANGER” are being unwound
the prayers my friend had enscrolled in real time.

The throat of the rearview and sliding down it
the Street of Farewell’s now unrolled in real time.

I heard the incessant dissolving of silk—
I felt my heart growing so old in real time.

Her heart must be ash where her body lies burned.
What hope lets your hands rake the cold in real time?

Now Friend, the Belovèd has stolen your words—
Read slowly: The plot will unfold in real time.

(for Daniel Hall)

My Ghazal

Here is one of mine:


The two of us

When we were first together
sun shone on the two of us.

We strolled down New York’s broad avenues,
noticed nobody but the two of us.

We scoured the local paper’s rental listings.
The apartment belonged to the two of us.

I smiled and the day was brighter
whenever I thought of the two of us.

We picked out new bookcases,
packed them with books for the two of us.

After a few years, we would sit and stare.
Nothing but silence between the two of us.

We would go to the movies,
our hands in our own laps, the two of us.

I would wake up at night
with the cat between the two of us.

Why did it go wrong,
when did it stop being the two of us?


Persona Poems and me

About Persona Poems



A Well-known Persona Poem



a song in the front yard

By Gwendolyn Brooks

I’ve stayed in the front yard all my life.

I want a peek at the back

Where it’s rough and untended and hungry weed grows.

A girl gets sick of a rose.

I want to go in the back yard now

And maybe down the alley,

To where the charity children play.

I want a good time today.

They do some wonderful things.

They have some wonderful fun.

My mother sneers, but I say it’s fine

How they don’t have to go in at quarter to nine.

My mother, she tells me that Johnnie Mae

Will grow up to be a bad woman.

That George’ll be taken to Jail soon or late


But I say it’s fine. Honest, I do.

And I’d like to be a bad woman, too,

And wear the brave stockings of night-black lace

And strut down the streets with paint on my face.

Creating a poet  — or two

In the course of writing my science fiction series, Novels of Aleyne, One thing that surprised me in creating the two poets and writing in their voices was the ease with which I slipped inside their heads. The first poet I created, Raketh Namar, namesake of the main character in my novel Relocated was supposed to live and write 5,000 years before the action in the novel and was the author of one of the most sacred texts of my aliens, the Aleynis. I don’t usually write prayers or write about spiritual subjects, yet I found myself writing them without difficulty.  Later, I created another poet, Constance Trusdatter, a very political poet who lives and writes about 100 years before the action of Broken Bonds, the second book in the series. I don’t usually write much about politics, yet a good number of Constance’s poems are strongly worded poems about this very subject.

World Creation


written a science fiction story. The

This is the cover for my  poetry collection, Sand in the desert. I wrote the poems to go long with Relocated, which I wrote for 2010 National Novel Writing Month, or NaNo.


To make the plot work, I needed my aliens to be distinctive but close to human in appearance. I gave them wider hands and feet, no body hair, and heads that were more oval than ours. I also needed them to have skin color that could be found here on earth, yet still be distinctive, so for this and a number of other reasons, one of them being that I was damned sick of the good guys always being white, I made my aliens, my main character, and his father Black.



Having written the poems, I wanted to put together the collection and publish it, but having dilly-dallied for some time, I decided to self-publish. The cover, designed by Karen Cioffi, and Michele Graf edited the collection, including some valuable suggestions about the order of the poems.

Here is one of the poems:

Ode to My Father

When I was very small child

he was as tall

as the stars.

When I was boy-high

he had shrunk

to the height of a large tree

When I became a man,

he shrank to the size

of a fist.

When I became a father,

he rose again.

His head touched the sky.

Now he is gone.

I take my small son

and point heavenward.

“There is your grandfather.”

Here’s an exercise that you might want to try:

Left as an Exercise for the Reader

Read up on a famous figure (living or dead)  (or use someone you know) whose personality is completely different from your own. Write a poem from that person’s perspective about an important event or series of events that shaped who he or she was.