Zipcar Vocab/Villanelle Challenge

[chanaleh]

Zipcar Spelling Bee Team Takes Second Place

Dear Boston Zipsters,
 
Thank you all for your support of the Brookline Foundation's 11th 
annual Spelling Bee which raised money for Brookline Public Schools. 
The Zipcar team turned in an astounding rookie showing by taking second 
place (out of over 50 teams). The team was made up of members Jennifer, 
Bob and Kei. They made us proud! 

Here are the words they spelled:
 
expertise, cantor, galahad, missal, harridan, hegemony, anoint, limn, 
canvass, trapunto, visceral, caudal, bouillon, psilosis, obeisance, 
usufruct, cruzeiro, surcingle, coelenterate, villanelle, dehisce

Now it is your turn: Use ALL the words in a short paragraph--250 to 500 
words, that hangs together grammatically and makes sense. Extra points 
are awarded to entries that contribute to human knowledge or progress, 
and extra, extra points to those that do so adhering to the poetic form 
of a villanelle (in which case, you don't have to use that word).
The best entry will be awarded a $50 driving credit. Hit reply and have 
at it. 

Stephen Oakley,
Director, Zipcar Boston

Dear me, I am entertained. :-) I'm not even convinced all these words can be fit into a villanelle... but I never can resist formal poetry. Anyone up to the challenge?

Comments

[tapuz.livejournal.com]

sigh, now I really want to be a member!

[mabfan.livejournal.com]

I actually know one of the winners. Bob grew up three houses down from me in Forest Hills, Queens.

[scholargipsy.livejournal.com]

Anyone up to the challenge?

I'm tempted, if only for style points. But a $50 credit is a chump reward for the difficulty involved in using all those words!

[chanaleh.livejournal.com]

I need hardly remind you that the writing of villanelles, however geeky, is never likely to be a lucrative pursuit ;-)

[dpolicar]

How's this?
========================
The harlequin's burlesque's sometimes devout.
In overcadenced villanellic verse
We whisper softly what we seek to shout.

A harridan's obeisances to a galahad's hegemony are met by those with expertise with doubt.
Like surcingles for ceolenterates or missals for a cantor, they juxtapose what wisdom would disperse.
The harlequin's burlesque's sometimes devout.

Like caudal dehiscing's predictable issuing of some ten-cruzeiro bouillon's visceral route
They offend the very senses with their evident offense, what they annoint as if to bless they serve to curse.
We whisper softly what we seek to shout.

Yet her usufruct's defensible: through hypocritic limning all her galahad's deceptions are brought out.
Her submission is subversive, manumissive of your doubt: what she at last confesses bad you know is worse.
The harlequin's burlesque's sometimes devout.

Her trapunto stitches fabrics of the fractured body politic with the outline of a post-dynastic lout.
As we canvass his deception from conclusion to inception his pronouncements public daily grow more terse.
We whisper softly what we seek to shout.

Fear incipient psychosis, and the stress-induced psilosis, but remember as he nears his final bout
Those who listened to his lies and stormed the shores and filled the skies and now can't excercise their franchise from a hearse.
The harlequin's burlesque's sometimes devout.
We whisper softly what we seek to shout.

(c) Policar 2004

=====
Admittedly, I'm cheating a bit with my choice of meter, but I really don't have the time to make it tight, and villanelle doesn't specify meter, just rhyme scheme and repetition. The trick to it is to write the five unconstrained rhyming couplets first, and then the first stanza to finish it.

Oh, and any reference to the Rice hearings, or the President, is entirely in the reader's imagination. Honest.

[dpolicar]

Incidentally, I'm informed that "usufruct" is most commonly employed in its legal sense ("the legal right of using and enjoying the fruits or profits of something belonging to another") but I use it here in its broader sense ("the right to use or enjoy something"). Similar things are true of "caudal."

All definitions that I bothered to look up are from www.m-w.com, and my introduction to the form was from here.

[besamim.livejournal.com]

O cantor, psilosis-suff'ring, galahad,
The missal's contents limn with expertise.
In your surcingle-bound trapunto nobly clad,

Ward off the wicked harridan, vile and bad.
Her coelenterate hegemony, pray, dehisce,
O cantor, psilosis-suff'ring, galahad!

Though in the caudal pews we languish, sad,
In obeisance to the Lord we bend our knees.
In your surcingle-bound trapunto nobly clad,

Do feed us full with bouillon and fresh shad.
Anoint our tongues with sauces rich in cheese,
O cantor, psilosis-suff'ring, galahad.

With one cruzeiro, let a usufruct be had
For all to sing your praises without cease,
O cantor, psilosis-suff'ring, galahad,
In your surcingle-bound trapunto nobly clad!

[scholargipsy.livejournal.com]

Unless you're Dylan Thomas, I s'pose....

[chanaleh.livejournal.com]

Hot damn. :-) and you even worked in "manumissive", which surely should score you extra brownie points there.

I do quite like your refrains, actually.

[dpolicar]

what, for manumissive but not burlesque? :-)

(I really wanted to work in "eristic", but "overcadenced" worked better.)

Anyway... thanks!

[dpolicar]

Ha!
This is delightful.
Thank you!

[besamim.livejournal.com]

Hee! No, thank you.

I must say, I wouldn't want to be the cantor for such a congregation as I've just imagined. Their taste in kiddush food, for one thing, is horrible. :-P

[dpolicar]

Not to mention tref.

[besamim.livejournal.com]

I love it! You've taken a more experimental approach, which contrasts nicely with my Thomasian by-the-book metre.

[chanaleh.livejournal.com]

It could be vegetable bouillon!

[dpolicar]

I suppose if I'll concede a Jewish missal, I should accept parve bouillon. Fair enough. And hey, at least the cantor wears interesting clothes.

[dpolicar]

Thanks!

The experimental nature of it is not entirely intentional, I must admit... I wanted it tighter when I started, which is why I admire your version so much, but the rhyme scheme fought me and I did actually have work to do, so I went with it as it was.

It is kinda fun, though.

Alternatively, with a dozen feet per line I could probably squeeze in all the words in the first couple of stanzas, then just had fun with the rest of it, but that too would have taken time.

I now find myself wanting to write a villanelle where the line length increases by one foot per non-repeated line. I think it would be an interesting effect.

[besamim.livejournal.com]

I don't know about a Jewish missal, but a rabbi once told me of a very classical-Reform temple which used to call Maariv "Vespers." Yikes!

[chanaleh.livejournal.com]

*spit-take*

Anyway -- I'm super impressed with your villanelle. I really hadn't even figured out how to shoehorn that many words into that many lines. And in beautiful meter! And it, mostly, makes sense!

Plus, I'm glad all this has caused you and Dave to make acquaintance. :-)

Ach!

[besamim.livejournal.com]

Rereading my doggerel, I realized that I'd neglected to use two of the required words (not counting "villanelle"). I'd used them all originally, but then discovered I had one tercet too many; tsk, tsk. Anyway, in the interest of geeky accuracy, here's the revised version:

O cantor, psilosis-suff'ring, galahad,
The missal's contents limn with expertise.
In your surcingle-bound trapunto nobly clad,

Ward off the wicked harridan, visceral, bad.
Her coelenterate hegemony, pray, dehisce,
O cantor, psilosis-suff'ring, galahad!

Though in the caudal pews we languish, sad,
In obeisance to the Lord we bend our knees.
In your surcingle-bound trapunto nobly clad,

Do feed us full with bouillon and fresh shad.
Anoint our tongues with sauces rich in cheese,
O cantor, psilosis-suff'ring, galahad.

Canvass cruzeiros, that a usufruct be had
For all to sing your praises without cease,
O cantor, psilosis-suff'ring, galahad,
In your surcingle-bound trapunto nobly clad!

Hey there!!

[baseballchica03.livejournal.com]

Hi! I'm a member of jbcs, and occasionally, I'll pop onto the friends page. I came across this post forever ago, and I actually managed to come up with one, just for the heck of it. It's not pretty, but... I call it The Villanelle of Doom (http://www.livejournal.com/users/baseballchica03/181135.html)