Quill & Parchment: Villanelles

Villanelles
by Annie Finch and Marie Elizabeth Mali
Price $13.50
Hardcover: 256 pages/ 184 poems (approx)
Publisher: Everyman's Library
(Everyman's Library is published by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House Inc).
Publish Date: March 6, 2012
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0307957861
ISBN-13: 978-0307957863
To Order: Random House Inc.

About the Book:
The first of its kind--a comprehensive collection of the best of the villanelle,
a delightful poetic form whose popularity ranks only behind that of the sonnet
and the haiku.

With its intricate rhyme scheme and dance-like pattern of repeating lines, its
marriage of recurrence and surprise, the villanelle is a form that has fascinated
poets since its introduction almost two centuries ago. Many well-known poets
in the past have tried their hands at the villanelle, and the form is enjoying
a revival among poets writing today. The poems collected here range from the
classic villanelles of the nineteenth century to such famous and memorable
examples as Dylan Thomas's "Do not go gentle into that good night," Elizabeth
Bishop's " One Art," and Sylvia Plath's "Mad Girl's Love Song." Here too are the
cutting-edge works of contemporary poets, including Sherman Alexie, Lorna Dee
Cervantes, Rita Dove, Seamus Heaney, Paul Muldoon,and many others whose
poems demonstrate the dazzling variety that can be found within the parameters
of a single, strict form.

Author Bios:

Annie Finch is the author of numerous books of poetry and poetics, including A Poet's
Craft: A Comprehensive Guide to Making and Sharing Your Poetry, forthcoming from
University of Michigan Press, and Spells: Selected Poetry, forthcoming from Wesleyan
University Press. She lives in Maine, where she serves as Director of the Stonecoast
MFA Program in Creative Writing.

Marie-Elizabeth Mali is the author of Steady, My Gaze (Tebot Bach, 2011) and co-editor,
with Annie Finch, of Villanelles (Everyman's Library Pocket Poets, 2012). She serves as
co-curator of the Page Meets Stage reading series in New York City, and her work has appeared
in Calyx, Poet Lore, and RATTLE, among others. www.memali.com.

From the Book:

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
by James Joyce

Are you not weary of ardent ways,
Lure of the fallen seraphim?
Tell no more of enchanted days.

Your eyes have set man's heart ablaze
And you have had your will of him.
Are you not weary of ardent ways?

Above the flame the smoke of praise
Goes up from ocean rim to rim
Tell no more of enchanted days.

Our broken cries and mournful lays
Rise in one eucharistic hymn.
Are you not weary of ardent ways?

While sacrificing hands upraise
The chalice flowing to the brim,
Tell no more of enchanted days.

And still you hold our longing gaze
With langorous look and lavish limb!
Are you not weary of ardent ways?
Tell no more of enchanted days.

Dangerous Astronomy 
by Sherman Alexie   

I wanted to walk outside and praise the stars,  
But David, my baby son, coughed and coughed.  
His comfort was more important than the stars   

So I comforted and kissed him in his dark  
Bedroom, but my comfort was not enough.  
His mother was more important than the stars   

So he cried for her breast and milk. It's hard
  For fathers to compete with mothers' love.  
In the dark, mothers illuminate like the stars!   

Dull and jealous, I was the smallest part
  Of the whole. I know this is stupid stuff  
But I felt less important than the farthest star   

As my wife fed my son in the hungry dark.  
How can a father resent his son and his son's love?  
Was my comfort more important than the stars?   

A selfish father, I wanted to pull apart  
My comfortable wife and son. Forgive me, Rough  
God, because I walked outside and praised the stars,
 And thought I was more important than the stars.

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