A Penny For Your Books

Readers can find Marilyn Hacker’s “Villanelle for D.G.B.” through a quick internet search.

Villanelles are quickly becoming my favorite poetic form. Their spiraling nature almost mimics a quickening heart, bringing a natural emphasis on repeated phrases (or variations of phrases) until their inevitable meeting at the penultimate and final line. In some ways, this essay mirrors the structure of a villanelle–through the idea introductions in the thesis and the repetition and expansion of each idea within the main argument until the conclusion, where the thesis will once again find itself braided together, made cohesive through the analysis of its literary filler. The villanelle is a story that gives the ending away in the first stanza, but still leaves the reader guessing until its end. An excellent example of this is “Villanelle for D.G.B.” by Marilyn Hacker.  She gives an arbitrary title to a poem that tears apart our understanding of what it means to live and what it means to love in a world that demands attention. Hacker chose the villanelle to enunciate the sharp contrasts of continual meetings and separations of people and things; intimacy can feel empty when it exists in patches of our lives. “Villanelle for D.G.B.” leaves the reader feeling as if they’re chasing after someone, almost always within reach but just shy of a touch–the poem shows intimacy and fear and pain all through its spiraling form, diction, and grammar usage.

This poem spirals through the use of two repeating lines that work throughout to create a story with their complementary, back-and-forth phrases. Hacker chose the repeating lines “Every day our bodies separate” (1) and “Not understanding what we celebrate” (3). The reader is immediately drawn in through negative denotations by the word “separate” and word combination “Not understanding,” further pronounced by the violent language that separates lines one and three: “exploded torn and dazed” (2). However, the reader is thrown off by the sudden “celebrate” at the end of line 3, as this is a word with a historically positive connotation. The reader is confused about the sudden celebration and does not understand where it came from or what spurred it. In turn, the narrator does not understand a cause for celebration when each and every day, they become forcefully separated from the person they love. Thus, the sudden insertion of a positive word is jarring, mismatched. After the first stanza, the reader wants to learn the answer to this question. What are we celebrating? Hacker winds the reader through a series of considerations, where first is what idea should be celebrated: “we grope through languages and hesitate / and touch each other, speechless and amazed” (4-5). Then she considers how the separation leads to an incompatibility with joy: “us farther from our planned, deliberate / ironic lives. I am afraid, disphased” (7-8). Why are we torn from the thing we love, from the thing we should celebrate? She then describes intimacy as if it were the natural state of being, as if lovers are never meant to part–they are “fused” (10), bound together, and this togetherness is in itself a form of “power” (11), a new form of energy created by the fusing of these two bodies. Fusion occurs through heat, which changes the state of matter and creates energy. Like calls to like, so once these bodies are fused, it becomes even harder for them to separate each day: “separate // routines are harder to perpetuate” (12-13). Finally together again at the end of the day, lovers learn to show appreciation through intimacy and action, a form of “wordless praise” (14). Finally, when morning comes around, the lovers are forced to separate again as they begin the routine of the next day apart: “wake to ourselves, exhausted, in the late / morning as the wind tears off the haze” (16-17). When lovers are together, the world is seen as if through rose-colored glasses, perfect. The morning sun wipes that tinted “haze” away as lovers face reality again, away from each other, because every day they must separate.  

Hacker uses short sentences to draw the reader’s attention to specific locations and strengthen the focus of each short sentence. The sentence lengths are as follows: nine words, 31 words, 22 words, 10 words, 34 words, four words.  The first sentence is short, as it allows the reader to focus on the violence of separation. The fourth sentence almost mimics the first in length, and it is the first time the word “separate” (12) is read as an adjective instead of a verb. This causes the reader to pause and consider the implication of the adjective–as much as lovers are separated (verb), they are also separate (adjective), apart, with different obligations from each other. Lastly, the final sentence is the shortest of the whole poem: “Every day we separate” (19). It is terse, forced, and is read with both frustration and finality. The separation is both unavoidable and inevitable, and the world is worse for it. 

Hacker implements specific commas and diction throughout her poem that work to highlight the overall feel and message of the villanelle. Embedded commas work together in stanzas two, three, and six to force the reader to pause and consider the subsequent phrases: “speechless and amazed” (5), “disphased” (8), “exhausted” (16). These are three entirely different emotional ways of being–line five first refers to the lovers’ reactions to togetherness, to each other. They are happy together; we are in love. Hacker’s use of the word “disphased” in line eight is significant not only due to the embedded comma, but because it is not a real or recognizable word. The reader pauses and stumbles as they piece together the prefix dis- (not) and root word -phased (staggered/surprised). The narrator is both “afraid” and not-surprised (8) at the same time. She understands the dichotomy between lovers and the monotonous obligations of everyday life. However, “disphased”  (8) could also work as a ghost word for “deface,” which would suggest a feeling of intentional disfigurement from this specific concept of celebration. With “I am [defaced]” (8) instead, the narrator is forced into the position of otherness, away from their natural state of being as “fused limbs and lips” (10). They are tarnished. Finally, the reader becomes “exhausted” (16) along with the narrator by the end of the poem, as they are also repeatedly separated and rejoined through the repetition of lines one and three and are disjointed by the secondary rhyme scheme perpetuated by the second line of each stanza (2, 5, 8, 11, 14, 17). The second line of each stanza intentionally segregates the rhyme of lines one and three, further distancing the lover’s bodies from celebration. 

“Villanelle for D.G.B.” by Marilyn Hacker utilizes the spiraling form of the villanelle with specific choices in diction and grammar to mimic the dichotomous push and pull of natural love between two people and the interruption of modern life. The reader is pulled along through a painful story of love and its inevitable disturbances through clever use of sentence length, embedded commas, and word play. These features add depth to a poem that follows the traditional villanelle form of an ABA, ABA…ABAA rhyme scheme with 19 lines. Hacker’s poem refines our understanding of what a villanelle is capable of–of what life takes from love.  

Work Cited

Hacker, Marilyn. “Villanelle for D.G.B.” 1974.