Mad Girl's Love Song
Mad Girl's Love Song - form Summary
Villanelle of Obsessive Repetition
This poem is a strict villanelle whose repeated refrains and tight circular form mirror a speaker’s obsessive thought patterns. The recurrence of lines like "I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead" creates a pendulum between imagined reunion and dawning loss, collapsing dream and reality. The formal constraints trap the emotion, so the poem’s music and repetition enact the instability and compulsive return that define the speaker’s grief.
Read Complete Analyses"I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead; I lift my lids and all is born again. (I think I made you up inside my head.) The stars go waltzing out in blue and red, And arbitrary blackness gallops in: I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead. I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane. (I think I made you up inside my head.) God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade: Exit seraphim and Satan's men: I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead. I fancied you'd return the way you said, But I grow old and I forget your name. (I think I made you up inside my head.) I should have loved a thunderbird instead; At least when spring comes they roar back again. I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead. (I think I made you up inside my head.)"
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