Cling to your rhyme through high water and hell
The theme is set up in the opening line
That's what it takes to write a villanelle

Let your intentions ring out like a bell
Just fit the structure and all else is fine
Cling to your rhyme through high water and hell

Three lines a verse, make sure you use them well
So sense and structure gently intertwine
That's what it takes to write a villanelle

Impatience at this point can start to tell
But do make sure you stick to your design
Cling to your rhyme through high water and hell

Don't let the rhythm rush you on pell-mell
Just let your words emerge in measured time
That's what it takes to write a villanelle

And make sure that the message you refine
Simple is good, excess the biggest crime
Cling to your rhyme through high water and hell
That's what it takes to write a villanelle

A sonnet's what this is, that much is plain
There really isn't any need to stare
Its introduction's made in this quatrain
Two more will follow, then a rhyming pair

It is iambic, so it goes “dot dash”
Two syllables a foot, five feet a line
The rhythm takes you onward in a flash
The sense of structure's reinforced by rhyme

After the first octet, a change of mood
The sonnet's true intentions are revealed
Its themes are love and essence, nothing crude
Hard hearts begin to melt and ******* to yield

Then closure as it slowly slips away
A soft exit – a pyrrhic fall – spondee.

Read Shakespeare and Milton and all of the rest
Keats, Coleridge and Wordsworth are some of the best
Read Ted Hughes and Sylvia, Motion, Duffy
They say what I want to say better than me

Read Homer and Ovid, Basho and Su ****
Chaucer and Boccaccio they've stood the test
Read Donne, Spenser, Marlowe, Jonson and Raleigh
Read Shakespeare and Milton and all of the rest

Read Swift, Pope, Blake, Tennyson, and Rossetti
The two Barrett Brownings are of interest
For feelings romantic as true as can be
Keats, Coleridge and Wordsworth are some of the best

Read Larkin and Betjeman if you're depressed
Read Wendy Cope to enjoy all of life's zest
Yes please don't think I despise modernity
Read Ted Hughes and Sylvia, Motion, Duffy

And how about all those I haven't addressed
Yeats, Auden, Joyce, Longfellow, Poe and Shelley
And all of the others I'm bound to have missed
They say what I want to say better than me

But what of the poet, with poets obessed?
In prose I am prolix, in speech stuttery:
So where will you find my emotions expressed?
On MySpace, on Twitter, read my poetry
It says what I want to say