villanelle

plural villanelles

1. communicationsA type of poem, consisting of five tercets and one quatrain, with only two rhymes.

   By definition the villanelle is restrictive, because it demands nineteen lines on two rhymes in six stanzas, the first and third lines of the opening tercet recurring alternately at the end of the concluding quatrain.

   1966, Louise Baughan Murdy, Sound and sense in Dylan Thomas's poetry (Studies in English Literature), The Hague: Mouton & Co, →ISBN, page 96

   1 more example

   But “Some Rules” is a villanelle, and it mostly follows the rules of the genre, an old French form that has found favor among modern English-language poets. (See Dylan Thomas’s “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night,” another advice-giving villanelle.)

   2026 May 28, A. O. Scott, Aliza Aufrichtig, “Finding Wisdom in a Poem by Wendy Cope”, in The New York Times, →ISSN