A villanelle has nineteen lines and just two rhyming sounds, in this case “ain” and “art”. Frank Scott’s Villanelle for Our Time was set to music by Leonard Cohen on one of his more unusual albums, Dear Heather. Years ago I heard Cohen tell BBC Front Row’s Mark Lawson that the discipline of verse, far from constraining creativity, opens up new avenues of thought.
From bitter searching of the heart
16
Jul