Some Sadness & Some Mischief an interview with Tim Seibles about Villanelles & Blues Villanelles
conducted by Jefferson Navicky
JN: In the summer of 2024, I had the pleasure of hearing Tim Seibles read at The Blue Raven Gallery in Rockland, Maine. My poet friend Glenn Morazzini had been telling me about Seibles’ blues villanelles for quite some time. Seibles’ reading in Rockland was the first time I’d heard the blues villanelles live, and they were incredible — lively, funny, dark, and dizzying as only villanelles can be. I wanted to talk to him about them. We conducted the interview over email in October and November 2024.
JN: How did you first get into writing villanelles? Was there a gateway villanelle experience?
TS: Yes, there was a “gateway poem.” When I was a junior in college, my poetry workshop prof, (the late Jack Myers) read W.H. Auden’s villanelle, “If I Could Tell You.” I was immediately taken with the form, the way the repetitions kept gaining emotional weight. In my very first book of poems (Body Moves, 1988), I included a villanelle called “Third Wish,” which was clearly rooted in Auden’s poem, I think, and formally very traditional (nineteen 10–syllable lines). The blues villanelles I’m writing now are 25 lines and feature more metrical variations, more variations in the repatons (meaning, “repeated lines.” Tim believes he first heard this word during a Mark Doty lecture when he was a graduate student in the MFA program at Vermont College back in the 1980’s. He liked the word and for years believed it to be a real word, although it does not appear in any dictionary. Tim really thinks it should) and more non–standard English.
JN: I love knowing about that gateway poem. Auden’s “If I Could Tell You” is so tight as a villanelle, and I can see the same tight formalism in “Third Wish,” but I can also hear your own distinctive voice that’s still present in the blues villanelles. I wonder about those initial decisions to begin writing your blues villanelles. Was there something particular to the villanelle that inspired your desire to expand the form, to make it your own? And were there significant iterations with your blues villanelles that led to your current 25–line version? I think anyone who has both loved and struggled with villanelles would love to hear anything about this progression.
TS: Expanding the form to 25 lines happened pretty organically. I was working on a villanelle, and felt that there was more to say, so I added 6 lines, and for some reason that stuck for me. With the extra length, I have more time to play with variations of the repeating lines, more time for mischief! I also changed the last quatrain into two couplets — to slow the closing down and add some drama (I hope). I imagine also that my love for the blues as a musical form propelled my interest in extending the form. Do you know “Voodoo Child” by Jimi Hendrix? Not the “slight return” but the original. It’s thirteen minutes long and I love what he does with the lyrics. I was not thinking consciously of that song when I began to stretch the form, but I believe a LOT goes on in the subconscious mind. (I’ve been listening to that particular blues since I was 12, when my brother brought home Electric Ladyland.)
Lastly, as with most things, the more you work on something the more it reveals its secrets to you. I’ve written many, many villanelles at this point, so my mind is ready in a way that it wouldn’t have been 20 years ago.
JN: I just spent the last few days driving around midcoast Maine blasting “Voodoo Child” over and over again. It’s been a good rock‘n’roll few days! The ferocity of Hendrix’s guitar, and its soulfulness at the same time, is amazing. As you name in the dedication for Voodoo Libretto, what a spirit guide indeed!
And I love those three blues villanelles you sent along with your last email. I wonder if you’d give The Café Review permission to publish them with the interview. They’d give readers a meaningful glimpse into what we’re talking about.
After reading “Discreet Blues Villanelle,” it reminded me of my last question I wanted to ask you. I loved “The Dead Play Blues Villanelle” in Voodoo Libretto, and I can hear some similar themes in “Discreet Blues Villanelle.” In both poems you do something that really struck me: you examine death so fully, and yet so playfully. It’s almost like you sneak up on Death itself, maybe when it’s sleeping. When you get so close and Death pops its eye open on you, you make Death laugh with a joke, or turn of phrase, and then, while Death is disarmed, you get out of there back to the world of the living. Other than the too–obvious, kinda silly question, “How do you do that?!” I think the real question is, “Is there something about the villanelle, particularly your blues villanelles, that helps you to do this so successfully?”
TS: Sorry for the delay in responding; the election (tragedy) rather derailed me for a bit.
With regard to the villanelle and its tonal agility, I believe the regular rhyme scheme and the repeating lines (with variations) invite some mischief, some playfulness. For my generation (here in America) rhyming poems often bring to mind the wonderful madness of Dr. Seuss. His rhymes are generally much louder than mine, but it would be very hard for me to deny that he and perhaps Lewis Carroll hover nearby when I’m working with regular meters and sound schemes. Given this, certain comic gestures naturally enter some of my villanelles.
I am nearing 70 and have lost both of my parents and several beloved friends. Because of this, almost daily, I find myself caught between abject terror about death and the impulse to laugh / shrug it off. I think these villanelles — in a number of ways — mimic my own mood swings as I wrestle with the idea of death. The comedic gestures give me some relief and, I hope, some relief to the reader / listener.