Reply/Comment to this "mother post" with a few discoveries of your own - be sure to post the definition of a FORM and at least one other TERM (It would work well if the additional term you choose to define is an element of your form). IF you retrieve your info from another website or book (and I'm sure you shall find it somewhere), be sure to cite your source in your response by simply supplying us with a hyperlink back to the web page or with author, book title, and year. Do NOT repeat terms or forms that have already been posted (This, therefore, requires you to read what has already been posted carefully). I encourage you to try creating or finding an example of the form that you've chosen to define.
Here's a definition served up with an example. I also defined a few extra terms seeing as these are basics - these we need to know up front. You need only define ONE form and ONE term. These definitions were found on poetryfoundation.org.
Villanelle
A French verse form consisting of five three-line stanzas and a final quatrain, with the first and third lines of the first stanza repeating alternately in the following stanzas. These two refrain lines form the final couplet in the quatrain. See “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” by Dylan Thomas.
stanza - A grouping of lines separated from others in a poem. In modern free verse, the stanza, like a prose paragraph, can be used to mark a shift in mood, time, or thought.
quatrain - A four-line stanza, rhyming (in some sort of pattern). For example, the quatrain in Thomas's final stanza (below) has the rhyming scheme of ABAA (height, pray, night, light).
refrain - A phrase or line repeated at intervals within a poem, especially at the end of a stanza. For example, in Thomas's poem, the refrains are "Do not go gentle into that good night" and "Rage, rage against the dying of the light."
couplet - A pair of successive rhyming lines, usually of the same length. (See how the refrained lines create a couplet in the final stanza of Thomas's poem?)
Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night
BY DYLAN THOMASDo not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Dylan Thomas, “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” from The Poems of Dylan Thomas. Copyright 1939, 1946 by New Directions Publishing Corporation. Reprinted with the permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation.
Source: The Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas (New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1957)
BONUS!! CLICK HERE to HEAR Dylan Thomas READ "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night" in an absolutely fabulous manner (recording posted on Poetry.org).
