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Congratulations to our most recent first place winner Samantha Shafrath from Sandusky, OH, whose first place-winning poem is the first villanelle in the history of our contest to win first place! In fact, the January to June 2025 contest in particular had the highest submission rate to date for villanelles. It is truly rewarding and so amazing to see so many amateur poets today experimenting with this complex form.
The villanelle, which originated in France during the Renaissance, is not an easy form to tackle. In her poem, Samantha deftly uses this form to support feeling rather than overshadow it, and that’s what distinguishes a technically correct villanelle from a compelling one.
A villanelle is more difficult to write than many other poetic forms because it demands an unusual amount of mental precision from the poet, who must simultaneously manage repetition, rhyme, structure, and emotional development—all within tight constraints. This form isn’t just structured—it’s structurally relentless! With nineteen lines arranged in a fixed pattern and only two repeating rhymes, the mind has to work on multiple levels at once: crafting refrains flexible enough to deepen with each return, sustaining musical coherence without forcing language, and ensuring the poem progresses emotionally despite its circular framework. It requires analytical thinking to maintain meter and rhyme, creative agility to avoid monotony, and strategic foresight to make the final couplet feel inevitable rather than repetitive. In short, composing a villanelle engages both the logical and imaginative faculties intensely. It is not as much a casual act of inspiration as it is a more sustained exercise in layered cognitive control, linguistic dexterity, and structural planning.
First and foremost, a villanelle depends on two repeating lines. Samantha’s refrains are strong in several ways. First, they immediately establish setting and mood (intimate, nocturnal, hushed). Second, they carry a slightly eerie, almost gothic tone that deepens with repetition. Third, they feel musically appropriate: the rhythm of “melodies are turned down low” mirrors the act it describes. The second refrain is especially striking, as “skeleton glows” suggests mortality, emotional bareness, physical exhaustion, and a ghostly presence. Each time it returns, it feels less metaphorical and more literal, especially by the final stanza when mourning is introduced. That deepening meaning is exactly what a villanelle needs.
Refrain: At night, when melodies are turned down low
Below moondust rays your skeleton glows.
Villanelles take a good bit of practice, as it’s not easy to incorporate such a required degree of repetition without sounding mechanical. Strong villanelles contain repeated lines that evolve emotionally and smoothly reinforce the theme as well as subtle punctuation or contextual shifts that alter interpretation. Furthermore, a strong villanelle doesn’t just repeat effortlessly and cohesively—it also intensifies. In Shafrath’s “Silent Ballads,” the language starts out illustrating soft, quiet intimacy and then progresses from hypnotic, musical trance, to defiance and searching with dimmed lights and fading energy, to mourning and farewell. By the final tercet, the refrain feels transformed. Where it is initially atmospheric, by the end it becomes elegiac. The line “We mourn as you forsake the lullaby” casts the entire poem in retrospective grief. That retroactive emotional shift is a hallmark of an effective villanelle.
In the past, we’ve always had a small handful of villanelles become second and third place winners, but this year we tip our poetic hat to Samantha for this emotionally sincere verse in which she artfully salutes the strict, intimidating form that is the villanelle and earns herself first place honors.
“Silent Ballads: A Villanelle” by Samatha Shafrath
At night, when melodies are turned down low,
And your eyes appear much darker than the sky,
Below moondust rays your skeleton glows.
Your bony fingers grace the keyboard so,
And on your shoulder my head starts to lie,
At night, when melodies are turned down low,
I hear your haunted rhythms plateau,
A melodic hypnosis I must defy,
Below moondust rays your skeleton glows.
Defying shadows, the heavens grow,
And light-starved eyes search for fireflies,
At night, when melodies are turned down low.
Play on, the lights are dimming, this I know,
A softened tune you could revivify,
Below moondust rays your skeleton glows.
I wish your tired bones could play on though,
We mourn as you forsake the lullaby
At night, when melodies are turned down low,
Below moondust rays your skeleton glows.