Tae! Villanelles. My favorite!
On the form itself, I think you’ve managed to be really deft with it – especially considering how easy it is for these to get choppy, rather than rolling (oh dear, I may be mixing my metaphors at bit, here).
I like how you took “washed away sins”, which on its own is rather trite, and added “in a bathtub drain.” The concrete image helps to ground a phrase that otherwise I’d be disappointed with! Instead, I rather like it. I also really like “The good men say that I have gone insane.” Just a lovely bit of scene/scenario setting that says so much with so little. Actually, I just really like your two repeated lines.
My real question for you is why do you have each line as its own sentence? I ended up mostly ignoring the periods, because they break this up much more than I like – was that your intention, to break it up? If so, then you’ve definitely achieved that. If not, then go play with the punctuation more!
There’s a few places I think you can really take your imagery up a level – for instance, with the third stanza, your second line I think tells far too much. I’d love to see something that shows instead, maybe something morbid/grotesque, about blood chasing sin or something like that. That gives actions and color, rather than the narrator telling us, “I am suicidal,” in flowery language.
<3
Points: 3866
Reviews: 488
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