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For Shadow Hamilton's 'Get Ready' Villanelle Poetry contest.
This Villanelle has eight syllables per line.
The villanelle has 19 lines, split into 5 tercets (three-line stanzas) and 1 quatrain (a stanza of 4 lines). There are two repeating rhymes and two "refrains," or repeated lines.
The 1st and 3rd lines alternate as the last lines of stanzas 2, 3, and 4. The last stanza uses the 1st and 3rd lines as a rhymed couplet. If we use capitals for the refrains and lowercase letters for the rhymes, the form could be expressed as: A1 b A2 / a b A1 / a b A2 / a b A1 / a b A2 / a b A1 A2.
There is no set meter in a villanelle but there is a set rhyme scheme. There is no fixed number of syllables for each line in a villanelle. Some poets like to use Iambic Pentameter and some like to stick to certain syllables, normally between 8 and 11.
The villanelle is broken into three parts: the introduction, the development, and the conclusion. Most villanelles build up intensity and tone until they reach the conclusion