The villanelle is a 19-line fixed form poem with repeating lines, composed in five tercets with a closing quatrain that ends in a rhyming couplet.
The villanelle is categorized as a modern classic form. It enjoyed a resurgence in the 20th century thanks to Oscar Wilde, Edwin Arlington Robinson, W.H. Auden, Sylvia Plath, Elizabeth Bishop, Theodore Roethke, Seamus Heaney, and others. One of the century’s most famous poems, "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night," by the legendary Dylan Thomas, is a villanelle. The villanelle also assumes a place of prominence in today’s great poetic forms thanks to another revival by Howard Nemerov and the New Formalist movement.
| Rhyme: | aba-aba-aba-aba-aba-abaa |
| Structure: | 19 lines – five tercets and a closing quatrain; 6 to 11 syllables per line |
| Measure/Beat: | Iambic trimeter, tetrameter, or pentameter |
| Common Themes: | Love, loss, and challenge |
| Other Notes: |
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