A Literary Tie to Rodney Dangerfield?

The It’s true, and you’ve probably seen it. In the movie Back to School, Rodney Dangerfield’s character recites and is inspired by Dylan Thomas’s famous villanelle, “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night.” The poetic form known as the villanelle is a tough one to write, requiring two regularly repeating lines, or refrains. The greatest challenge lies in creating refrains that are strong enough and flexible enough to be worked into the poem over and over without becoming tiresome, stodgy, or insensible. Oh yeah, and they have to rhyme.

When I set out to write a villanelle, I took as subject matter the unadorned architecture of strip malls and used it to reflect on the general blandness of day-to-day suburban life. So my poem is not as lofty as Thomas’s, but I believe I stayed true to the form. Here is my attempt: