����ý

Genetics is a villanelle.

This means that it has a very tight structure and rhyme scheme.

A villanelle is a nineteen-line poem broken into five three-line stanzas and a final four-line stanza.

The first line of the first stanza is repeated in the last line of the second and fourth stanza.

The third line of the first stanza is repeated in the last line of the third and fifth stanzas.

These two repeated lines from the first stanza then become the last two lines of the poem.

The rhyme scheme is usually aba.

This very repetitive structure - which concludes on lines used in the opening stanza – creates a cyclical structure. This makes it a particularly apt form for exploring themes of time, memory and how the past affects the future.

In this villanelle we see that the refrain lines move from being about her own hands, “My father’s in my fingers, but my mother’s in my palms” to being about the hands of her future children. We see this in her address to her husband, “I’ll bequeath my fingers, if you bequeath your palms.”

This cyclical structure shows how both the past and the future are important in shaping our identities. We may be formed by the past, but we have the power to create new identities in the future.