Why “paradelle” is a great word
PARADELLE — [Noun] A deliberately complex and restrictive poetic form, created as a parody, consisting of four six-line stanzas with a fixed pattern of line repetition and word reuse. Coined circa 1997 by the poet Billy Collins, as a blend of 'parody' and 'villanelle' (a traditional French verse form). Unlike the villanelle, a legitimate and resonant traditional form, or the sestina, a challenging but sincere exercise in pattern, the paradelle is a satirical cage of arbitrary rules. It is the earnest agony of a student trying to solve an unsolvable puzzle, a clockwork mechanism that, when wound, produces only a small, rude noise, and a monument to the beautiful failure of impossible order—a testament to the human propensity to impose rules, even in jest, and the equal compulsion to follow them.