Beneath the summer sky, a field of wheat,

Golden sheathes grown and cut by sweeping blade,

Full and bright, what you sow is what you reap.

Once men were little bothered by the heat,

And when snow falls they hibernate and fade,

To wait the summer sky, a field of wheat.

We dance and sing to a different beat,

Pounding drums of gold and cymbals of jade,

Gold and green, what you sow is what you reap.

Devotees call our buildings no small feat,

Fat metal giants, preferably made

Over a summer sky, a field of wheat.

Five miles down the line, the train hits concrete,

Screaming wheels cannot move past the blockade,

Twist and turn, what you sow is what you reap.

To render pain and labor obsolete,

We gather ashes of the Earth to trade

Acres of summer sky and fields of wheat.

By then our transformation is complete,

A thousand dreams cannot stop the decay

Eating the summer sky, the field of wheat,

Beg and plead, what you sow is what you reap.

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I chose a villanelle because the repetition is wonderful. The position of the refrains brings so much cohesiveness to the piece, and at the same time lessens the work the poet must put into it because 9 out of the 18 lines are already written. My first favorite poem - the first poem I ever read and thought, "Wow, this poem is awesome" - was Dylan Thomas' "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night," a poem also in villanelle form.

There is something about the repetition and rhyme scheme of formalist poetry that strikes a chord in me - indeed, I believe, in all of us. The man who first conceived the complicated structure of the villanelee must have been a genius. The repeating pattern of refrains and rhymes, tied together at the end by a quatrain, brings shape to the poem. When I first read "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night," I wasn't aware that it was written in decades-established structure. I simply knew that here was a poet who knew how to compose a poem.

Writing free verse if easier than writing in a formal structure. You don't have to pay attention to rhyme, meter, or rhythm. Writing GOOD free verse, however, is harder than writing in formal structure for the exact same reasons. There are over 170,000 words in the English language and simple mathematics tells us that there are a near infinite amount of combinations in which to arrange a subset of those words. Formal structure, by virtue of its strict meter and rhyme scheme, cuts those combinations down, even if just slightly.