Villanelle on rye, hold the pumpkin
So, with my fifth grade tutoring student, one of the things we do each week is work through a madlib I make by lovingly hijacking a small piece of classic literature. A while back, I posted my madlib treatment of the oft-quoted but maybe not as oft-considered "to be or not to be" soliloquy from Hamlet.

I like using madlibs as a teaching device for several reasons: they force students to think about words' functions and roles in a sentence and they promote the sort of chaotically absurd humor I try to propagate.

This week, I decided to step it up a level and introduce the concept of a rhyme scheme into the mix. In fact, I made a villanelle madlib. I have a fascination with this poetic form, the extent of which is not entirely explicable. The most famous example of this form is probably Dylan Thomas's, Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night. When I made my NaNoWriMo attempt last fall, I named my main character Villanelle (she usually went by Nelle). Of course, the whole shebang was supposed to highlight the variety of interpretations or outcomes given set information, and so invoking a highly restrictive, repetitive literary form seemed appropriate. On the more explicable side of my fascination with the villanelle is the way it has to reincorporate the same lines over and over, layering the same words with new context and providing a striking rhythm when read aloud. Also, I liked the sound of the word; it's got a little cellar door going on, and it shortened to something that didn't smack of literary pretension the way the full version did. Of course, the whole endeavor kind of collapsed under the weight of the conceptual burden I had layered upon it, and the resulting dust cloud was ripe with the scent of rotting Camembert.

The villanelle that I hacked up is fairly tame on its own, and, in fact, tackles the villanelle itself as its subject matter. But that's unimportant, as most of it gets thrown out the window anyway. A madlib with a rhyme scheme writes itself in an interesting way. One of the rhymes is given, the other is a string of rhymes that must be sparked and carried through by the madlibbers.

Here's a link to a pdf of the madlib file, including poem with blanks, separate blanks sheet, and full poem.

Also, in villanelle-related links, here is A comic which includes a sandwich description in villanelle form. How has it taken me this long to find Cat and Girl? Also amusing was the site for the book Hipster Haiku (No joke! Well, actually, it's full of jokes, but it does really exist.) by Siobhan Adcock, which includes a gallery of "Failed Hipster Poetic Forms." Dulce et decorum est pro Greenpoint score mori. I rest my case.

Also, I just discovered terza rima. This could be a fun concept madlib. Interlocking rhyme schemes? Hmm...