Shakespeare’s Homeland: Sketches of Stratford-Upon-Avon, the Forest of Arden, and the Avon Valley (1903)

A Collection of Verse and Villanelles contains one hundred villanelles alternating with free verse. The villanelle style of poetry can be recognized by Dylan Thomas’ famous poem Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night. It contains four tercets of three lines ending in a quatrain. The first and the third lines are repetitious throughout the poem. Free verse does not rely on rhyme but uses cadence mixed with assonance and consonance as illustrated by Walt Whitman in Leaves of Grass. Both literary forms use other poetic devices, such as alliteration, simile, metaphor and imagery. More descriptive and historical characteristics are outlined in this book’s preface. Free verse, however, may be a little more pensive than the villanelle which is why I chose to alternate each style in the succeeding pages. These poems vary in mood and there are enough different voices to accompany many of the varying moods we might go through. Who can count the vast expanse of human emotion, its richness, joy or sadness? Poetry tries to encapsulate many of these moments as in a cameo or vignette, and it is not only the poet who tries to do this but the readers themselves. Poetry may be descriptive, prescriptive or just raise more rhetorical questions about life; however, it does preserve moments to be shared with others for posterity.