April Mini Episode: Lullaby in Fracktown

Lullaby in Fracktown, Lilace Mellin Guignard

Above you can find a link to this week’s poem, as well as the podcast episode itself. Below, you’ll find the script for the episode.

Analysis and Context

Lullaby in Fracktown is a villanelle by Lilace Mellin Guignard. A little background on the author. She lives in rural Pennsylvania, which is, like where I’m from in upstate NY, a place that doesn’t have a lot of industry anymore, but that has things like mining, forestry, and now also fracking. I know several people who have sold or leased their land that used to be farmland or forest, to companies that want to frack there. So this is an environmental poem, too.

And it’s about how when you’re in a poor town, you’re not giving that thought. You’re focused on getting your kids grown, and keeping your job, and kind of hoping to be able to forget and ignore some of those longer term problems. Like, if you are living hand to mouth, you probably don’t have the luxury of thinking about how to plan for your grandchildren’s environmental future. You know?

This is a picture of life in a poor town, with the dad working (luckily) and the mom talking to the son. The water catches fire, meaning it is undrinkable. The colors of the town feel drab (gray bird), but the love she has for her son is colorful (gumdrops and lollipops), and the hope she has for him and wants him to rely on is colorful (blue shoes). 

And ultimately, this is the hope and admission of a mother to her son. She’s talking to her son, and saying that he should look to hope when he’s sad. If we look at blue suede shoes from the Carl Perkins song and the reference to blue shoes here, we can interpret them as representing hope, the thing you guard with everything you’ve got, the thing you’d give up everything for, the only thing you must keep close and safe. In the song Blue Suede Shoes, the speaker says “you can knock me down, step in my face, slander my name, […] burn my house, steal my car, drink my liquor, […] But uh-uh honey, lay off of my shoes”.

The poem calls on the helplessness working class parents feel when wishing for a better future for their kids. The speaker wants her son to get out of Fracktown. She wants him to study hard and go to college. The dad “still has a job to lose” and that’s the nicest thing she says about it, so that to me means “it’s not much, it’s not good, but at least he has one, at least we can pay some of the bills.” 

Form

Now let’s talk about form! This is a villanelle. That means it has two important lines that rhyme, 5 stanzas where the first and third line rhyme/the second lines rhyme with each other/and the third line alternates between those important two lines, a final four line stanza with the first line rhyming with the important lines, the second line rhyming with all the other second lines, and the third and fourth are the two important lines (but with a twist or punch).

And now for our how-to: Take out a piece of paper. Write down two powerful-feeling lines that rhyme. Make sure they can be interpreted in different ways, or are written with homophones, as that allows you to create more depth in your poem. In the left margin, write the following: on the first line, write A1. Second line, B. Third line A2. Fourth line, leave blank. Next line, write A. Next, B. Then, A1. Leave a blank line. Then A, then B, then A2. Blank line. A, B, A1. Blank. A, B, A2. Blank. A, B, A1, A2. 

Mark your paper so that it looks like this down the left margin:

A1
B
A2

A
B
A1

A
B
A2

A
B
A1

A
B
A2

A
B
A1
A2

Ok. After every A1, write that first powerful line you created. On every A2, write the second powerful line you made. Now your poem is like halfway done.

The next step is deciding what you’re going to write for your first B line, keeping in mind that it should probably do something to tie together your A1 and A2 ideas. And keep in mind that you want it to end with a word you can rhyme all the way down.

And the last thing to do is to fill in the rest of your poem. Every B line should rhyme with every other B line. Every A line should rhyme with all the other A lines (including your A1 and A2 lines).

That’s all there is to a villanelle. It’s a super easy form, it’s really rewarding and so fast to write.

My Villanelle

And finally, here is a villanelle I wrote. Small amount of context: I wrote this thinking about how my friends and I in the military were just kids, and how the people sending us out were mostly rich and old and powerful. And how our parents/the adults were made to believe we would be out there doing something good for America. And how we came back messed up, having done something different from what most of us thought.

Carthage

Rain pulls the skies down.
Back-flung heads throwing water
ablute this dusty desert ground.

We wandered town to shantytown,
chains weaving out from our collars.
Rain pulled the skies down.

We prayed for rest and we found
playing, soaked, our sons & daughters
abluted this dusty desert ground.

We sold them all to the crown
knowing they were meant for slaughter.
Rain pulled the skies down.

And our children, trapped & bound,
sent out naked, used for fodder,
abluted this dusty desert ground.

The few returned make no sound,
having been laid upon the altar.
Rain pulls the skies down,
ablutes this dusty desert ground.
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