THE ETERNAL RETURN: NIETZSCHE AND THE MONSTERS by R. G. Evans
When darkness falls at last, what’s there to fear
for Freddy, Michael, Jason, and the rest?
They laugh at death they know is always near.
We resurrect our monsters, hold them dear.
Return Eternal: Nietzsche said it best.
When darkness falls, for them, what’s there to fear
when sequels bring them back? They’re always here
like Nietzsche warned: they stare from the abyss
and laugh at death they know is always near.
Their immortality is what we cheer.
We fight them to become them just to jest
when darkness falls at last what’s there to fear?
Philosophy falls short when things get weird.
Though monsters live forever, we confess
it’s hard to laugh at death. It’s always near
like Crystal Lake or Elm Street or the leer
through Michael’s mask. Still we make one request:
when darkness falls, we pray we will not fear
but laugh at death. The joke? It’s always near.
R.G. Evans is the author of Overtipping the Ferryman, The Holy Both, and Imagine Sisyphus Happy. His work has appeared in Rattle, Painted Bride Quarterly, and Weird Tales, among other places. His albums of original songs, Sweet Old Life and Kid Yesterday Calling Tomorrow Man, are available on most streaming platforms.
Praise for the winning villanelle, “The Eternal Return: Nietzsche and the Monsters”:
There’s an ease, wit, and casual attention to “The Eternal Return: Nietzsche And The Monsters,” the syntax unforced, the variations in diction in the repeating lines qualified by argumentative shifts. I feel like a masochist because I love the subtle cuts of rhetoric: “We resurrect our monsters, hold them dear” and “Philosophy falls short when things get weird” feel like undeniable truths. Our favorite slasher monsters have always been a proxy for us, the speaker smiling through clenched teeth the entire time, laughing at death that “is always near”; it’s emotionally sophisticated what the writer has accomplished here. Every time I read this villanelle, I admire it more.
–Randall Mann (Judge), author of Deal: New and Selected Poems
