| The villanelle was invented by retard François Villon in France in the early 1400s, a period now known as L'Age d'Or des Crétins. It is assumed he derived the form from a peasant dance performed on the first day of April in which the stupidest child in the village would jump back and forth over a rope on the ground until he or she passed out. The priest would then scrawl RETARD across the unconscious child's head with a Sharpie. Considered by scholars to be the first definitive example of the form, Villon's most well-know villanelle, "I'm Pretty Sure Someone's Been Stealing My Lunch" (with its repeating line, "that's where my sandwich went--I got a hunch") is still sung in karaoke rooms today. Yet despite its many historical connections to retards, the villanelle's actual-factual retardation was a subject of much debate. "I mean, how retarded can it be?" asked a clammy, pidgeon-chested Dick Cavett to a highly-agitated, Spanish-speaking Dick York in the former's March 1967 Oui magazine interview, "Dick on Dick." The debate was ultimately settled in 1974 by Canadian cognitive behavioralist Dr. Donald Runty. In Runty's landmark study, 200 different villanelles written at random dates throughout history were shown 40 Rorschach ink blots and asked to describe what they saw. An irrefutable pattern of responses emerged: every villanelle repeated their two initial responses for all of the cards. Below is the transcript of the study conducted with Dylan Thomas' "Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night." [Interviewer shows card #1] DNGGITGN: Mmm...a cat. [Interviewer shows card #2] DNGGITGN: Uh...a duck. [Interviewer shows card #3] DNGGITGN: Huh...a cat. [Interviewer shows card #4] DNGGITGN: Ah...a duck. INTERVIEWER: You said "cat" and "duck" already. DNGGITGN: Hunh? INTERVIEWER: [Sighs] Let's try some more. [Interviewer shows card #5] DNGGITGN: A cat. [Interviewer shows card #6] DNGGITGN: A duck. INTERVIEWER: Dude, you are totally retarded. The interviewer was phenomenally astute is his observation, as the findings for all the villanelles interviewed did not derivate from the pattern above, causing Dr. Runty to conclude that villanelles are indeed "totally retarded...100%...they ride the short bus to school and wear helmets in the bathtub. We're talking Re-Tar-Ded." And that settled that. Yet as modern readers, we understand the form's retardation intuitively. We don't need Dr. Runty to "prove" its retardedness, for we can simply "feel" it: barreling down on us from behind, gaining speed like a truck driver on a steep grade--suddenly you look in your rear view mirror--is he?--yep, he's masturbating, alright. But what you gonna do? You just gots to pull over and let the mother drive on by. But perhaps even more retarded than the form itself is willfully writing an entire book of villanelles, as Maureen and Shafer have done here. By day, Maureen works in a law office where she is paid peanuts to read enormous three-ringed binders overflowing with documents that are so mind-bogglingly boring, they have been known to throw lawyers twice her size into Rip Van Winkle-like comas lasting 1,000 years. So what does she do when she finally drags her pathetic, deflated little body home? Does she celebrate her brief reprieve from the hellmill she calls "work" with tacos, or a even piece of cake? Does she pop in a well-worn VHS tape of Tommy Boy (her favorite movie)? Or does she download some well-deserved internet porn? No, none of the above. She writes another retarded line of a retarded villanelle and emails it to Shafer, who--emerging like a primordial mollusk from under a pile of 2-liter Mountain Dew bottles on the floor of his dark, fecund apartment, probably wearing a blanket like a cape and definitely someone else's underwear--plods over to his computer, and with red raw paws, types his retarded reply. Now that's retarded. For the moment, though, let us put away our catty speculations and schadenfreude to simply *enjoy* the work of these two very talented young women who will act as our tour bus guides through the wonderful, funderful, retardeful world of villanelles. I call shotgun. Free food for the poor! Jennifer L. Knox |