News
News Flash: Memory Shop and Anime Zakka to Open in Harvard Square
News
Harvard Researchers Develop AI-Driven Framework To Study Social Interactions, A Step Forward for Autism Research
News
Harvard Innovation Labs Announces 25 President’s Innovation Challenge Finalists
News
Graduate Student Council To Vote on Meeting Attendance Policy
News
Pop Hits and Politics: At Yardfest, Students Dance to Bedingfield and a Student Band Condemns Trump
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
Want to keep up with breaking news? Subscribe to our email newsletter.