Ponyville & Other Poems

by AugieDog

23 - Dweebs (villanelle)

Hating them's too easy. I refuse!
Let them stare! They won't get me to blink!
Curl my beak: derision's what I choose!

Ponies stumble, missing all the clues,
Pitiful, as if they never think!
Hating them's too easy. I refuse!

What they have, they don't know how to use,
Strong but stupid, always rinky-dink!
Curl my beak: derision's what I choose!

Magic shackles bind their cutesy shoes,
Rainbow chains of purple, plaid, and pink!
Hating them's too easy. I refuse!

Sun and moon and weather: they abuse
All of nature, shattering their link!
Curl my beak: derision's what I choose!

Just in time, I fled: I didn't lose!
They're the losers! They're the ones who stink!
Hating them's too easy. I refuse!
Curl my beak: derision's what I choose!

Author's Note:

A vitriolic little villanelle from Gilda. This would reflect her state of mind just after her episode of the show; I've made her three years older and more thoughtful in Foreigner...

For those who track the vitals on these, the meter here is iambic pentameter acephalectic, the unstressed syllable cut off at the beginning of each line so they all start with a thump and end with a thump.

Comments

[TheJediMasterEd]

This is tough to do. Good job!

[journcy]

Do you have any advice for a new poet?

[AugieDog]

4975648

Thanks!

I do hafta admit that my first reason for giving Gilda a villanelle was because she was a villain. As I got into it, though, the repeated lines started to seem more like she was protesting too much, and that fits in with the way I'm developing her character over in Foreigner. So happy accidents win out once again!

4975743

My advice would be to decide what kind of poetry you like, then start looking around to see how folks have written it over the years. I mean, I became a nut for this fixed-form stuff back when I was studying Latin and Greek in college. Those languages approach the whole idea of poetry in a very different way from stress-based languages like English and German and even French, but all the early poets in our modern languages got their ideas for how to put a poem together from the ancient Greeks and Romans! It's like putting someone else's shoes on--and on the wrong feet, for that matter--and then figuring out how to dance anyway.

How it works, I have no idea. But I enjoy connecting up with that tradition and trying to do it myself.

But whatever appeals to you, take a look at some of it and try to see how the authors get their effects--or even if their effects are anything that you're interested in trying for. Yeats and Keats and all those guys, I can barely stand reading them 'cause they break all the rules all the time. Their stuff's good, yes, but what they're doing--stretching the forms to see what shapes they can come up with--that's not for me.

I got deep into the nuts-n-bolts of poetry--the craft of it, I guess you'd say--long before I got into the expressive part--the art of it. And by "long before," I mean that it's been 30 years since my college days studying the ancient poets. The stuff I wrote in the 15 years after that was just me monkeying around with rhyme and word accent patterns and like that. It's only been in the last 15 years that I've been putting together stuff that seems to work pretty well, and only in the last couple years that I've started coming up with stuff--like these pony poems--that really makes me happy.

So start slow, I guess is the short answer. It's like riding a bicycle or falling off a log: once you learn the basics, the rest is just practice.

That Long-Winded Mike Guy

[journcy]

4976399

Thank you for the detailed answer, and thank you for the pony poetry!

[PresentPerfect]

I find it hard to believe Gilda's thinking in poetry. <.<

[AugieDog]

9161915

You know what they say:

"Villains gotta villanelle."

Unless they don't say that. And I'm fairly sure they don't. And besides, she's not a villain anymore, is she?

Mike