Sestinas
Student Poetry This Project: WR245 More Home		One of the most difficult and complex of the various French forms, the sestina is a poem consisting of six six-line stanzas and a three-line envoy. It makes no use of the refrain. This form is usually unrhymed, the effect of rhyme being taken over by a fixed pattern of end-words which demands that these end-words in each stanza be the same, though arranged in a different sequence each time.          If we take 1-2-3-5-6 to represent the end-words of the first stanza, then the first line of the second stanza must end with 6 (the last end-word used in the preceding stanza), the second with 1, the third with 5, the fourth with 2, the fifth with 4, the sixth with 3--and so to the next stanza. The order of the first three stanzas, for instance, would be: 1-2-3-4-5-6; 6-1-5-2-4-3; 3-6-4-1-2-5. The conclusion, or envoy, of three lines must use as end-words 5-3-1, these being the final end-words, in the same sequence, of the sixth stanza. But the poet must exercise even greater ingenuity than all this, since buried in each line of the envoy must appear the other three end-words, 2-6.          Thus so highly artificial a pattern affords a form which, for most poets, can never prove anything more than a poetic exercise. Yet it has been practiced with success in English by Swinburne, Kipling, and Auden.          Definition: The sestina is a challenging form in which, rather than simply rhyming, the actual line-ending words are repeated in successive stanzas in a designated rotating order. A sestina consists of six 6-line stanzas, concluding with a 3-line “envoi” which incorporates all the line-ending words, some hidden inside the lines. The prescribed pattern for using the 6 line-ending words is: 1st stanza 1 2 3 4 5 6 2nd stanza 6 1 5 2 4 3 3rd stanza 3 6 4 1 2 5 4th stanza 5 3 2 6 1 4 5th stanza 4 5 1 3 6 2 6th stanza 2 4 6 5 3 1 envoi 2--5 4--3 6--1          There is a pattern to this confusion. Each stanza spirals from the bottom to form the next stanza. The envoi is like a final spring. Thus the form looks like this graphically:          Like the sonnet, the sestina dates back to the Middle Ages, was adopted by the Italian poets of the Renaissance (Dante & Petrarch), and is often used by contemporary poets.
		Links for examples and more information: Bat Sestina by Linda Appel Hog's Head Happenstance by Rose Lefebvre Craft of Poetry Forms of Verse Bay Moon Sestina How-to Guide Word Weave Sestina How-To Guide
		Student Poetry for this Project 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 Copyright © 2005 The Students of WR245 Spring Term 2005. All rights reserved. Clackamas Community College, Oregon City, Oregon Web design by Doran Web Works.