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To the Editors of the CRIMSON:
***
To the forms an infidel,
I ask the Crimson cockerel:
what the hell is a villanelle?
Sokolov rings the tocsin bell
from the Bloody Citadel;
I, to the forms an infidel,
might write the kinds of doggerel
called rondel, virelai, noel:
but what the hell is a villanelle?
I confess I am unprosodical,
undiacritical, cannot spell,
am to the forms an infidel;
I admit my sins poetical,
metrical, archaeological;
but what the hell is a villanelle?
This latest thundered encyclical
says I did wrong, but does not tell--
What the hell! Can my own villanelle
be to the forms an infidel?
By the use of a single rime, I hope to avoid the further wrath of my literary superiors. If this course of action meets with Mr. Sokolov's approval, might I respectfully suggest as well that villanelles were written long before that of Jean Passerat in 1006, from which the present form is derived, and that the art of poetry is a trifle more capacious than his rules? Richard Sommer Teaching Fellow in English
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