posted May 17, 2007 03:06 AM         

"Sestina tends to have a scary ring to it, and I imagine many fall back with a look of fright at the mere sound of the word. We all have, it's all right. A little pactice and the sestina can be a very rewarding exercise for any poet looking for a challenge.

The sestina is yet another fun, French form, and it is divided into 6 sestets (six line stanzas) and 1 triplet called an envoi which is just a concluding stanza that is half the size of the rest. Unless you wish to make the sestina harder than it already may be, it is usually unrhymed and works by repeating the end words of each line. The envoi contains, in any order, all of the six end-words. The catch is that one has to be buried in each line and another must be at the end of the line. The pattern for repeating the words is like this: (stanza A) 123456, (stanza B) 615243. This 615243 pattern is how each of the "next" stanzas are made. The first way to learn this pattern is to look at a sestina. "Sestina d'Inverno" by Anthony Hecht:

Here in this bleak city of Rochester,
Where there are twenty-seven words for "snow,"
Not all of them polite, the wayward mind
Basks in some Yucatan of its own making,
Some coppery, sleek lagoon, or cinnamon island
Alive with lemon tints and burnished natives,

And O that we were there. But here the natives
Of this grey, sunless city of Rochester
Have sown whole mines of salt about their land
(Bare ruined Carthage that it is) while snow
Comes down as if The Flood were in the making.
Yet on that ocean Marvell called the mind

An ark sets forth which is itself the mind,
Bound for some pungent green, some shore whose natives
Blend coriander, cayenne, mint in making
Roasts that would gladden the Earl of Rochester
With sinfulness, and melt a polar snow.
It might be well to remember that an island

Was blessed heaven once, more than an island,
The grand, utopian dream of a noble mind.
In that kind climate the mere thought of snow
Was but a wedding cake; the youthful natives,
Unable to conceive of Rochester,
Made love, and were acrobatic in the making.

Dream as we may, there is far more to making
Do than some wistful reverie of an island,
Especially now when hope lies with the Rochester
Gas and Electric Co., which doesn't mind
Such profitable weather, while the natives
Sink, like Pompeians, under a world of snow.

The one thing indisputable here is snow,
The single verity of heaven's making,
Deeply indifferent to the dreams of the natives,
And the torn hoarding-posters of some island.
Under our igloo skies the frozen mind
Holds to one truth: it is grey, and called Rochester.

No island fantasy survives Rochester,
Where to the natives destiny is snow
That is neither to our mind nor of our making.

After reading this, you can feel the obsession that underlies the sestina. The repetition of those ends words can crawl under your skin, not with the hit-over-the-head bluntness of a villanelle, but with a sneaking, growing strength that is more subtle.

How to and Examples
One way of writing a sestina is to choose your 6 end words before you even begin the poem. Say, for instance, "book," "town," "pumpkins," "watch," "potatoes," and "sling." These are your 6 words in order of stanza one. Write a sestina. I find it's very difficult to get a good poem with this method, but it does force the poet to be creative, depending on the difficulties and relations of the pre-chosen words.

A second way is to just write a sestet and go from there, using each of the end words from that stanza. This is my preferred method because I like not knowing, initially, where I'll break the line, so my first stanza is written according to line break and enjambment, not word choice with a sestina in mind.

From there, the sestina is free to experimentation. The end words can be modified, say "leaf" to "leave" or "love" or "life" to give the initial word more dimension. It may be harder to keep the exact same word through all 7 stanzas, but sometimes the poem asks for a different word, actually improving the poem rather than taking away. As well, I find a good excerise is to set a line-length limit based on the lines from the first stanza. The sestina line is generally longer, and as you can see in the Hecht poem, the lengths are also erratic: some stick way out on the page, others are stuck deeper inside the poem. If a poem is going to be rather blockish in form (as the sestina is), I prefer to have the lines be at a similar length for appearance's sake; I think that just looks better on the page. As well, this method also forces the poet to use crisp, concise details in the poem because there is only so much room in every line to get to the word at the end. Every word must be chosen accurately, and in this way the poet's powers of diction improve."
http://www.uni.edu/~gotera/CraftOfPoetry/sestina.html

posted May 17, 2007 03:08 AM         

Sestina by Elizabeth Bishop

September rain falls on the house.
In the failing light, the old grandmother
sits in the kitchen with the child
beside the Little Marvel Stove,
reading the jokes from the almanac,
laughing and talking to hide her tears.

She thinks that her equinoctial tears
and the rain that beats on the roof of the house
were both foretold by the almanac,
but only known to a grandmother.
The iron kettle sings on the stove.
She cuts some bread and says to the child,

It's time for tea now; but the child
is watching the teakettle's small hard tears
dance like mad on the hot black stove,
the way the rain must dance on the house.
Tidying up, the old grandmother
hangs up the clever almanac

on its string. Birdlike, the almanac
hovers half open above the child,
hovers above the old grandmother
and her teacup full of dark brown tears.
She shivers and says she thinks the house
feels chilly, and puts more wood in the stove.

It was to be, says the Marvel Stove.
I know what I know, says the almanac.
With crayons the child draws a rigid house
and a winding pathway. Then the child
puts in a man with buttons like tears
and shows it proudly to the grandmother.

But secretly, while the grandmother
busies herself about the stove,
the little moons fall down like tears
from between the pages of the almanac
into the flower bed the child
has carefully placed in the front of the house.

posted May 18, 2007 03:37 PM         

AWARENESS

Awareness: “I exist”
A spark of Light
begins to grow
expand, contract, breathe
starting its work
the birth of creation

The man’s life is overwhelming work
its too hard for him to grow
too painful to even breathe
He has lost his way and his light
in a hell of his own creation
wondering if he should exist

A tiny flower starts to grow
outside and begins its work.
Part seed, part light,
another miracle with a will to exist
and to share its creation:
a lovely scent to breathe.

Though the man’s body ceases to breathe
He continues to exist
and must continue his work,
his journey to himself and to Light,
to discern the whole of creation.
But without interaction, his discontent will grow...

the pain distracting him from his work,
as his mind drifts farther from the Light,
becoming a distorted creation
that has lost the will to grow
but still continues to exist.
It makes it harder for others to breathe.

A tiny child begins to grow.
The sun bathes her in light.
She settles down to begin her work,
the dusty, chalky art, which is her creation.
She is happy to just breathe
the air and wonder if fairies exist.

Together they expand, contract, and work to strengthen the faith in creation,
as the Light continues to exist
and breathe, and as One we continue to grow

posted May 22, 2007 02:42 PM           

Great Work! I can't believe no one commented
on your POem, I am in Awe!

posted May 23, 2007 02:49 AM         

My poetry teacher replied today too and I came here to share what she said. I posted the same "disclaimer" about it being a "beginner" attempt to the one I posted on the "classroom" site. No one else tried a sestina there, but my young buddy tried a villanelle (I'm guessing about the spelling right now). Everyone else just decided to skip the final "optional" poem.

Here is what my teacher said, I love all of her comments and feel quite pleased to receive them:

-- Such a fine "beginning" sestina-- attractive imagery, thoughtful
content, elegant vocabulary -- it could *be* a sestina without too much
more work, particularly if you took advantage of the possibilities of
using "work" as a verb, "light" as a verb and adjective, and occasional
substitutions of "breath" for "breathe."

--

I had thought about "breath" but I wasn't sure if that was cheating or not hehe, but I forgot about "light" as an adjective. I am going to revise it at some point this summer... when the time is right!

posted May 23, 2007 03:05 AM         

hehe... our signatures

posted May 29, 2007 08:57 PM         

My real inspiration for posting is to say that I utterly adore Train. DOJ is one of my absolute all time fave songs.

Explodes my chest, you know??

posted May 29, 2007 11:12 PM         

Drops Of Jupiter lyrics

Now that she's back in the atmosphere
With drops of Jupiter in her hair, hey, hey
She acts like summer and walks like rain
Reminds me that there's time to change, hey, hey
Since the return from her stay on the moon
She listens like spring and she talks like June, hey, hey

Tell me did you sail across the sun
Did you make it to the Milky Way to see the lights all faded
And that heaven is overrated

Tell me, did you fall for a shooting star
One without a permanent scar
And did you miss me while you were looking for yourself out there

Now that she's back from that soul vacation
Tracing her way through the constellation, hey, hey
She checks out Mozart while she does tae-bo
Reminds me that there's room to grow, hey, hey

Now that she's back in the atmosphere
I'm afraid that she might think of me as plain ol' Jane
Told a story about a man who is too afraid to fly so he never did land

Tell me did the wind sweep you off your feet
Did you finally get the chance to dance along the light of day
And head back to the Milky Way
And tell me, did Venus blow your mind
Was it everything you wanted to find
And did you miss me while you were looking for yourself out there

Can you imagine no love, pride, deep-fried chicken
Your best friend always sticking up for you even when I know you're wrong
Can you imagine no first dance, freeze dried romance five-hour phone conversation
The best soy latte that you ever had . . . and me

Tell me did the wind sweep you off your feet
Did you finally get the chance to dance along the light of day
And head back toward the Milky Way

And tell me, did Venus blow your mind
Was it everything you wanted to find
And did you miss me while you were looking for yourself out there...