Marilyn Hacker:Villanelle

"Every day our bodies separate,

exploded torn and dazed.

Not understanding what we celebrate


we grope through languages and hesitate

and touch each other, speechless and amazed;

and every day our bodies separate


us farther from our planned, deliberate

ironic lives. I am afraid, disphased,

not understanding what we celebrate


when our fused limbs and lips communicate

the unlettered power we have raised.

Every day our bodies' separate


routines are harder to perpetuate.

In wordless darkness we learn wordless praise,

not understanding what we celebrate;


wake to ourselves, exhausted, in the late

morning as the wind tears off the haze,

not understanding how we celebrate
our bodies. Every day we separate."


Marilyn Hacker uses the structure of a villanelle to give her poem a different quality. The frequent repetition of the same words and sounds throughout the poem gives a sense of déjà vu, which is frustrating,and appealing. The cycle created by the sounds of the poem echoes one of the poem's major themes, the cycle of celebration and separation. Marilyn Hacker explores the idea that lovers alternate between celebration of sexual relations and physical and emotional separation, creating an ever-changing but repetitive pattern that never resolves.
Marilyn Hacker uses a poetic device called enjambment to further reinforce the themes of her poem. Enjambment means that sentences are not broken up neatly into lines or stanzas, but cut across stanzas and end and begin in the middle of lines. This gives the poem a sense of speed. The reader wants to rush on to the next period. It allows Marilyn Hacker to fit long, and complex sentences into a poem with short lines. This creates the sense that the poem is struggling to break free of its bonds.
  Although its structure is repetitive, Marilyn Hacker's villanelle is dynamic because each time something reappears it has gained a layer of meaning. Far from repeating the same idea over and over, Marilyn Hacker creates sonmething that increases in significance as it progresses. The poem ends in much the same way as it begins, but by the end, the two simple phrases have become filled with meaning. This mimics the progress of human relationship, which grows and deepens as two partners become more in tune with each other's bodies, more emotionally committed, and more comfortable expressing their relations.