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Thursday, May 17, 2007

What Is A Paradelle?

The paradelle is one of the more demanding French fixed forms, first appearing in the langue d'oc love poetry of the eleventh century. It is a poem of four six-line stanzas in which the first and second lines, as well as the third and fourth lines of the first three stanzas, must be identical. The fifth and sixth lines, which traditionally resolve these stanzas, must use all the words from the preceding lines and only those words. Similarly, the final stanza must use every word from all the preceding stanzas and only those words.
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1 Comments:

Blogger Suzannah said...

Oops. Billy is not just a former U.S. Poet Laureate, he is also the inventor of the paradelle. (Parody/paradelle; get it?) However, you're not the only person he got one over on. See below; Theresa Welford started an anthology and wrote to Billy, saying that she was having trouble finding paradelles. No wonder! All those in her book are new.

You should post your paradelle!

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From Wikipedia: He invented the poetic form of the paradelle as a hoax to parody the villanelle, using his mock "Paradelle for Susan"; the paradelle is emblematic of his rejection of formal poetry. The first paradelle anthology, The Paradelle, edited by Theresa M. Welford, was published in January 2006, showing that the inventiveness of Collins, no matter the purpose, serves to inspire other poets.

4:52 AM  

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