Listen to Podcast Interview with Grace Cavalieri on The Poet and the Poem

Welcome to Villanelle Village. The Villanelle is a challenging poetic form. There are five tercets followed by one quatrain. The initial tercet sets up two repeating refrains in the first and third lines of the poem. These are repeated in alternating stanzas and repeat for a final time as the last two lines of the poem.

This tool lets you work with each of the 19 lines that make up the stanzas. The first stanza is the most important since it sets up the two repeating refrains. Hit the "Set" button for each line to automatically set the text for the applicable lines. In the case of the first line, the last word of that line will be inserted as hints into the lines which must rhyme with that word. Similarly, setting the second line will fill all applicable lines with the last word of that line as a hint. Of course, lines can be changed and new rhymes can be added as needed. When you are done, hit Create Villanelle and you will get a downloadable text document which you can use as a template by copying it into your regular writing word processor.