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A Softer World: 419

It’s about time I started this thing up again.

Billy Collins on the “paradelle,” in an interview with Grace Cavalieri:

“I wanted to write an intentionally bad formal poem. I wanted to write a poem in which the poet couldn’t handle the rules of a genre, and botched it. And I thought, well, I could write a really bad sonnet, or a bad villanelle, but I figured there’s enough of those around, so I would just make up a new form, and I called it the paradelle, which is a kind of combination of a parody and villanelle, and then I made up this insane set of rules for it, and I tried to pass it off in a footnote as actually an old, fixed form from, I think, from the 11th century France. And the first rules are that the lines just repeat themselves. So that is almost, you know, kind of a numbskull sense of simplicity. But then the secondary set of rules asks you to use all only the previous words, and it’s a little hard to explain without looking at it, but it would be like having a really bad set of letters in a Scrabble game, and being asked to write the Lord’s Prayer with them.”

Grace Cavalieri on the paradelle, same interview:

“Do you know that I’ve taught the paradelle without knowing you were kidding? And got some fabulous poems….I was teaching a workshop in Italy, and so I…I think that’s a good thing we could do tomorrow, Everyone will write a paradelle like Billy Collins. I get home, and the Paris Review reveals that I’ve been duped. It’s a joke.”

 

Paradelle for Susan

I remember the quick, nervous bird of your love.
I remember the quick, nervous bird of your love.
Always perched on the thinnest, highest branch.
Always perched on the thinnest, highest branch.
Thinnest love, remember the quick branch.
Always nervous, I perched on your highest bird the.

It is time for me to cross the mountain.
It is time for me to cross the mountain.
And find another shore to darken with my pain.
And find another shore to darken with my pain.
Another pain for me to darken the mountain.
And find the time, cross my shore, to with it is to.

The weather warm, the handwriting familiar.
The weather warm, the handwriting familiar.
Your letter flies from my hand into the waters below.
Your letter flies from my hand into the waters below.
The familiar waters below my warm hand.
Into handwriting your weather flies you letter the from the.

I always cross the highest letter, the thinnest bird.
Below the waters of my warm familiar pain,
Another hand to remember your handwriting.
The weather perched for me on the shore.
Quick, your nervous branch flew from love.
Darken the mountain, time and find was my into it was with to to.

NOTE: The paradelle is one of the more demanding French fixed forms, first appearing in the langue d’oc love poetry of the eleventh century. It is a poem of four six-line stanzas in which the first and second lines, as well as the third and fourth lines of the first three stanzas, must be identical. The fifth and sixth lines, which traditionally resolve these stanzas, must use all the words from the preceding lines and only those words. Similarly, the final stanza must use every word from all the preceding stanzas and only those words.