Of Villanelles and Pantoums

Quick and dirty definitions with links to examples.

Villanelle

A villanelle is a poem of about nineteen lines (no one says you can't extend it).  The first five stanzas are tercets (meaning they have three lines), and the last stanza is a quatrain (four lines).  A Villanelle has a certain pattern of repetition based on the first tercet.  The first line and the last line of that tercet alternate in the suceeding tercets and form the last couplet (two lines) in the quatrain at the end.  As for rhyme scheme, all the first and third lines rhyme (as in ALL) and all the second lines rhyme (as in ALL).

You can find good villanelle examples at the following links:

Wikipedia-Villanelle
Baymoon.com - Villanelle

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Pantoum

A pantoum is a rare but relatively easy to master poem slightly similar (but not really) to a villanelle.  It has the same scheme of repetition, only it's not just the first stanza that is isolated.  Pantoums are made up of quatrains which may or may not rhyme and may or may not have a specific meter.  Unlike a villanelle, which has only two possible rhyming sounds, a pantoum can have numerous rhyming combinations.  The only hard and fast rule is to stick to the pattern of repetition.

A pantoum's pattern is very simple: The second and fourth lines of one stanza become the first and third lines of the next.  In the last stanza, however, the second and fourth lines are the third and first lines (in that order) of the first stanza.  A pantoum always ends with a repetition of its first line.

You can find good pantoum examples at the following links:

deviantART - Pantoum Pantomime by Necroserpent
Wikipedia - Pantoum
Baymoon.com - Pantoum