Speaking from the Gut

I wonder if my villanelles could be a narrative poem.

Well, I’ve been writing them for two years now.
My model could be Gordon Lord Byron,

who wrote the epic poem, Don Juan.
Byron could churn out the ottava rima, and how!
so why couldn't the villanelles be an epic poem?

Byron wanted a hero, a yours-true one,
so he chose the rakish character who gets snatched down
into the bowels of hell—in Mozart first, then Lord Byron.

There’s a more-recent treatment by Thomas Mann—
allegory of Nazi Germany,
but Dr. Faustus is a novel not a narrative poem.

Are the villanelles a novel?—there’s the question—
the adventures of Dewey pícaro,
pretty much the same guy as Gordon Lord Byron.

Byron wrote obsessively. It’s hard to read that
whole poem now—why would you, anyhow?
You can start anywhere you want in the villanelles,
you’ll be able to pick up the low hum.