The Villanelle as Oncology Rounds

The villanelle is a highly structured, repeating and rhymed poetic form believed to have originated as song lyrics to accompany dancing in Renaissance France (from where its name derives). It consists of tercets with the first and final lines of the first stanza repeated in alternating fashion as the final lines of subsequent stanzas. These repeated lines, or refrains, rhyme with each other as well as with the initial line of each stanza; the middle lines of each stanza also rhyme. The enchanting, almost dizzying effect of these formal requirements is evident in “Chimeric Transplant Villanelle.” The dance of this poem, given its medical context of bone marrow transplantation, is as much interpersonal as it is melodious, as the sonic repetitions express a sense of vexed closeness between its physician-speaker and the patient. Inexorably intertwined by mortal illness and its treatment, through the villanelle they negotiate both their shared yet distinct emotions and the limits of healing. “You are not me, you are not mine,” the speaker begins, an insistence on separate selves that ironically is also the invitation to care; as the line is repeated through the poem, its attempt to maintain boundaries through the increasing intensity of side effects that become mutual experience (“We’re losing hair and teeth and mind”) is tested. Whether the music’s metaphor evokes more infusion cycles or oncology rounds’ repetitiveness, ultimately we feel both the resounding beauty of the therapeutic alliance here, and the reluctance, however necessary, to acknowledge its borders—and that it must end.