the.com/villanelle

A poem that can't let go, repeating two lines until they mean something new.

means A nineteen-line poem built from five three-line stanzas and a closing four-line stanza, using only two rhymes and repeating two refrain lines throughout.

from From French villanelle, from Italian villanella, a rustic song or dance of the villa — the countryside. It tied originally to peasant part-songs with a repeating refrain, not to a fixed line-and-rhyme scheme; that strict nineteen-line form was crystallized later, in the 19th century, from a single influential model poem, and poets since have treated it as the villanelle's rule.

structure
19 lines, 5 tercets plus a closing quatrain
refrains
two lines alternate, then unite at the end
famous example
Dylan Thomas's Do Not Go Gentle
origin
started as a simple Italian farm song
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