Understand how Structure works
First, what is structure? Everyone is going to have their own thoughts about this, but I see structure as the picture frame of the poem, it is what holds it all together. If you look more deeply - it is the roadmap to the reader. How is the reader going to read this poem so that he/she can achieve meaning from it? That is structure.There are so many different poetry forms out there, so many different rules and broken rules, the reader is going to need some kind of consistency to be able to make it through to the end with a clear vision.
Aley, you said you were playing with what I call line breaks - and how two lines can complete a thought. Understand that the reason that you can have 1. lines where the idea ends at the end, and 2. lines where the thought/idea continues onto the next line, the reason for this is a measure of consistency of grammar, punctuation, and where to break the line.
So for example, for your first stanza:
Tell me not your tale of woe,
for I have no time to see
that tale my ears will never know.
I only did two things here. First, I changed the semicolon to a comma (it's not a complete thought yet). The second was I uncapitalize the "f" in for, because when you have a capitalized line - what you're saying to the reader is that this is a new thought. Just like how we capitalize our sentences to differentiate between thoughts.
The tree is green.
Green is the tree.
as opposed to:
the tree is
green is the
tree
Do you see that by capitalizing and breaking, the thought stops, and a new thought begins a new line? Whereas, by not capitalizing - the thought continues on to the next line?
So the first order of business for you is to look over your punctuation and capitalization and see where the thought begins and ends. Does it end at the end of the line? Or does it continue on to the next line - because if so, then I wouldn't capitalize your lines. Normal grammar rules will apply. I think that your readers get confused if you have a mixture of all these things - the roadmap becomes too hard to read.
Understand the Villanelle
I think that free-writing in poetry is great, because only by doing can you really learn. Only by writing a villanelle were you able to begin this discussion and come across all of these little roadbumps in trying to write a successful one. The best way to learn is to overcome those roadbumps, and you can read villanelles and you can read about villanelles or have someone tell you what the purpose of a villanelle is, but I'm someone who believes that you learn best through experience.
So, yes. I'm a supporter of free writing poetry! But I think that freewriting alone isn't going to get you "there" yet, if you want to write well and if you want to write successfully then any poem, even the villanelle, is going to call for a lot of thought behind it. So it's about freewriting first, then noticing the roadbumps - which you did! and then trying to overcome them, which you're doing. So, I don't want you to be frustrated! This is all just part of the process.
That being said, the reason that a villanelle works so well in my opinion (others are going to have their own thoughts, I'm sure) is that it is going to naturally have all of those poetic elements (the refrains and rhymes make it lyrical, lyrical is pleasing), and the repetitions are normally important - or have an importance in meaning that by the end becomes cyclical. And like you noticed, Aley, when you read a villanelle and you get to the end - it's like you have a dual meaning, or a dual understanding of the work. Part of that is ambiguity, like you mentioned. By constructing a villanelle, you get to play with the meanings of words/phrases.
Part of that is that the structure is intricately designed to weave ideas together, almost like a braid, and then it unravels or combines together to allow for that important revelation that we love in endings. We like endings that are 1) powerful (so that they leave an impact, and we remember the poem) 2) moves us -- that is not to say that all endings need to inspire/move us or have some kind of moral, but it has to have this effect where by the time we reach the end (we, as in reader, author, speakers, characters and all) there is a shared understanding, for the first time, of how the whole poem/story fits together)
So I think by understanding that, first, why a structure works/how it works, and what effects it achieves, it might help you figure out where you're falling short.
Gender:
Points: 5533
Reviews: 696