Sestina Festival

Sestinas are one of the most complex forms of poetry. A sestina is made up of six six-line stanzas and a three-line stanza at the end. Instead of rhyming, the six words at the end of the lines are repeated throughout each stanza in a specific way. The form goes like this:

1. ABCDEF

2. FAEBDC

3. CFDABE

4. ECBFAD

5. DEACFB

6. BDFECA

7. A/B C/D E/F (The first letter is the end word, the second letter is the word that comes in the middle of the line)

Ever since I learned about the sestina, I wanted to attempt to write a successful one. This week, I only got to write two sestinas because of how difficult the form turned out to be. I knew going into this form that it would be hard, but without any prior experience actually in writing one, I found that I kept writing myself into a corner. Seven stanzas is a lot to write with the same six end words. After a stanza or two, I found that the story the poem was telling would get muddied under my desperate attempts to fit the structure.

I had two approaches to the sestina this week. The first way I tried involved writing the first six lines on their own and then working whatever words were at the end into the next six stanzas. The words I used were tiger, stool, hello, knew, song, and forgotten. This poem was a complete and utter disaster. Reading back on it, it makes no sense and there is no genuineness to it whatsoever. Not even the first six lines lend any real emotion to the reader. I think I got so caught up in the repeated end words, that I tried for words that (in retrospect) were quite obscure to work with. The poem was trying WAY too hard. Another problem I ran into is that I didn't ever want to end a line without it also being the end of the sentence or phrase. That really stifled me for words like knew and forgotten.

Because of that massive fail with the first sestina, I decided to try a different approach. Instead of just writing, I choose words before I even thought about the poem. I tried to keep the words simple while having them be something concrete, something you could visualize. I also tried to get a variety of different types of words. The words I chose were yellow, six, toes, stretch, drop, and fingers. This poem turned out a lot better than the first. Another thing that helped is that I let my sentences run on to different lines. It was very difficult for me to allow, since it's not my usual writing style, but it really helped to let that part of my writing go. In the end, I did find that the poem became a little repetitive and I did still kind of write myself into a corner once I got to the last two or three stanzas, but at least with this one I can feel proud and work on it a little more.

Thanks for reading and, please, come back next week where I will be reporting on a week of revisions!

#sestina #poetry