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Author
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Topic: Art of the Sestina
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A. E. Stallings
Member Posts: 2751
From:Athens, Greece
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted June 07, 2004 01:38 AM |
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To avoid taking Kate's Villanelle thread down another path. Some examples of sestinas folks admire? I admit that a lot of sestinas put me to sleep. But it is pretty amazing when they work. Back shortly with some examples...
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MacArthur
Member Posts: 1267
From:Portland, Oregon, U.S.A.
Registered: Jan 2001
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posted June 07, 2004 03:38 AM |
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The ObsessionLast night I dreamed my father died again,
a decade and a year after he dreamed
of death himself, pitched forward into night.
His world of waking flickered out and died--
an image on a screen. He is the father
now of fitful dreams that last and last. I dreamed again my father died at last.
He stood before me in his flesh again.
I greeted him. I said, "How are you father?"
But he looked frailer than last time I'd dreamed
we were together, older than when he'd died--
I saw upon his face the look of night. I dreamed my father died again last night.
He stood before a mirror. He looked his last
into the glass and kissed it. He saw he'd died.
I put my arms about him once again
to help support him as he fell. I dreamed
I held the final heartburst of my father. I died again last night: I dreamed my father
kissed himself in glass, kissed me goodnight
in doing so. But what was it I dreamed
in fact? An injury that seems to last
without abatement, opening again
and yet again in dream? Who was it died again last night? I dreamed my father died,
but it was not he--it was not my father,
only an image flickering again
upon the screen of dream out of the night.
How long can this cold image of him last?
Whose is it, his or mine? Who dreams he dreamed? My father died. Again last night I dreamed
I felt his struggling heart still as he died
beneath my failing hands. And when at last
he weighed me down, then I laid down my father,
covered him with silence and with night.
I could not bear it should he come again-- I died again last night, my father dreamed. Lewis Turco
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Tim Murphy
Lariat Emeritus Posts: 8348
From:Fargo ND, USA
Registered: Oct 2000
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posted June 07, 2004 05:33 AM |
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You Gote-heard Gods
Strephon.
1You Gote-heard Gods, that loue the grassie mountaines,
2 You Nimphes that haunt the springs in pleasant vallies,
3 You Satyrs ioyde with free and quiet forests,
4 Vouchsafe your silent eares to playning musique,
5 Which to my woes giues still an early morning;
6 And drawes the dolor on till wery euening.
Klaius.
7O Mercurie, foregoer to the euening,
8 O heauenlie huntresse of the sauage mountaines,
9 O louelie starre, entitled of the morning,
10 While that my voice doth fill these wofull vallies,
11 Vouchsafe your silent eares to plaining musique,
12 Which oft hath Echo tir'd in secrete forrests.
Strephon.
13I that was once free-burges of the forrests,
14 Where shade from Sunne, and sports I sought at euening,
15 I that was once esteem'd for pleasant musique,
16 Am banisht now among the monstrous mountaines
17 Of huge despaire, and foule afflictions vallies,
18 Am growne a shrich-owle to my selfe each morning.
Klaius.
19I that was once delighted euery morning,
20 Hunting the wilde inhabiters of forrests,
21 I that was once the musique of these vallies,
22 So darkened am, that all my day is euening,
23 Hart-broken so, that molehilles seeme high mountaines,
24 And fill the vales with cries in steed of musique.
Strephon.
25Long since alas, my deadly Swannish musique
26 Hath made it selfe a crier of the morning,
27 And hath with wailing strength clim'd highest mountaines:
28 Long since my thoughts more desert be then forrests:
29 Long since I see my ioyes come to their euening,
30 And state throwen downe to ouer-troden vallies.
Klaius.
31Long since the happie dwellers of these vallies,
32 Haue praide me leaue my strange exclaiming musique,
33 Which troubles their dayes worke, and ioyes of euening:
34 Long since I hate the night, more hate the morning:
35 Long since my thoughts chase me like beasts in forrests,
36 And make me wish my selfe layd vnder mountaines.
Strephon.
37Me seemes I see the high and stately mountaines,
38 Transforme themselues to lowe deiected vallies:
39 Me seemes I heare in these ill changed forrests,
40 The Nightingales doo learne of Owles their musique:
41 Me seemes I feele the comfort of the morning
42 Turnde to the mortall serene of an euening.
Klaius.
43Me seemes I see a filthie clowdie euening,
44 As soon as Sunne begins to clime the mountaines:
45 Me seemes I feele a noysome sent, the morning
46 When I doo smell the flowers of these vallies:
47 Me seemes I heare, when I doo heare sweete musique,
48 The dreadfull cries of murdred men in forrests.
Strephon.
49I wish to fire the trees of all these forrests;
50 I giue the Sunne a last farewell each euening;
51 I curse the fidling finders out of Musicke:
52 With enuie I doo hate the loftie mountaines;
53 And with despite despise the humble vallies:
54 I doo detest night, euening, day, and morning.
Klaius.
55Curse to my selfe my prayer is, the morning:
56 My fire is more, then can be made with forrests;
57 My state more base, then are the basest vallies:
58 I wish no euenings more to see, each euening;
59 Shamed I hate my selfe in sight of mountaines,
60 And stoppe mine eares, lest I growe mad with Musicke.
Strephon.
61For she, whose parts maintainde a perfect musique,
62 Whose beautie shin'de more then the blushing morning,
63 Who much did passe in state the stately mountaines,
64 In straightnes past the Cedars of the forrests,
65 Hath cast me wretch into eternall euening,
66 By taking her two Sunnes from these darke vallies.
Klaius.
67For she, to whom compar'd, the Alpes are vallies,
68 She, whose lest word brings from the spheares their musique,
69 At whose approach the Sunne rose in the euening,
70 Who, where she went, bare in her forhead morning,
71 Is gone, is gone from these our spoyled forrests,
72 Turning to desarts our best pastur'de mountaines.
Strephon. Klaius.
73These mountaines witnesse shall, so shall these vallies,
74These forrests eke, made wretched by our musique,
75Our morning hymne is this, and song at euening.
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Janet Kenny
Member Posts: 12412
From:Queensland, (was Sydney) Australia
Registered: Dec 2001
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posted June 07, 2004 07:23 AM |
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Tim
Perhaps for copyright reasons I'd better just post the link to that poem by Sir Philip Sidney. The notes are very good.
http://eir.library.utoronto.ca/rpo/display/poem1942.html This is full of the wonderful pastoral imagery I'm used to in Monteverdi's Italian works of more or less the same period. I am thinking particularly of Orfeo. I can hear this being sung and proclaimed. This may be useful to post apart from the link. STANZA
i 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6
ii 6 | 1 | 5 | 2 | 4 | 3
iii 3 | 6 | 4 | 1 | 2 | 5
iv 5 | 3 | 2 | 6 | 1 | 4
v 4 | 5 | 1 | 3 | 6 | 2
vi 2 | 4 | 6 | 5 | 3 | 1
vii 1 2 | 3 4 | 5 6 | Because I'm pretty sure Sidney was following Italian style I think this poem has a grace and passion that not too many other English sestinas I've met possess. Again, I'm impressed by Sidney more than the form he employs. I love his meter and his language. I'll admit the chosen end words are powerful and effective. He uses them with great skill.
Janet
[This message has been edited by Janet Kenny (edited June 07, 2004).]
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Luigi Coppola
Member Posts: 362
From:UK
Registered: Feb 2004
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posted June 07, 2004 08:05 AM |
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To be honest, I haven't read any good sestinas, so I'm looking forward to seeing what people post.As a extra note to Janet's sestina form details, I have a code that’s easy to remember when writing them (I think I invented it lol) - 2 4 6 5 3 1 If you can remember that (I remember it by the even numbers, followed by the odd reversed), then you can derive all of the first 6 stanzas, like this - 1st end word in stanza 1 becomes 2nd end word in stanza 2
2nd end word becomes 4th end word
3rd becomes 6th
4th becomes 5th
5th becomes 3rd
6th becomes 1st Then apply that code to the second stanza to get stanza 3, 3 to get 4, and so on. Luigi
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A. E. Stallings
Member Posts: 2751
From:Athens, Greece
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted June 07, 2004 08:44 AM |
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John Ashbery is one of the contemporary masters of the form. Here is one in a loose tetrameter:The Painter Sitting between the sea and the buildings
He enjoyed painting the sea's portrait.
But just as children imagine a prayer
Is merely silence, he expected his subject
To rush up the sand, and, seizing a brush,
Plaster its own portrait on the canvas. So there was never any paint on his canvas
Until the people who lived in the buildings
Put him to work: "Try using the brush
As a means to an end. Select, for a portrait,
Something less angry and large, and more subject
To a painter's moods, or, perhaps, to a prayer." How could he explain to them his prayer
That nature, not art, might usurp the canvas?
He chose his wife for a new subject,
Making her vast, like ruined buildings,
As if, forgetting itself, the portrait
Had expressed itself without a brush. Slightly encouraged, he dipped his brush
In the sea, murmuring a heartfelt prayer:
"My soul, when I paint this next portrait
Let it be you who wrecks the canvas."
The news spread like wildfire through the buildings:
He had gone back to the sea for his subject. Imagine a painter crucified by his subject!
Too exhausted even to lift his brush,
He provoked some artists leaning from the buildings
To malicious mirth: "We haven't a prayer
Now, of putting ourselves on canvas,
Or getting the sea to sit for a portrait!" Others declared it a self-portrait.
Finally all indications of a subject
Began to fade, leaving the canvas
Perfectly white. He put down the brush.
At once a howl, that was also a prayer,
Arose from the overcrowded buildings. They tossed him, the portrait, from the tallest of the buildings;
And the sea devoured the canvas and the brush
As though his subject had decided to remain a prayer.
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Clive Watkins
Member Posts: 1815
From:UK
Registered: May 2001
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posted June 07, 2004 09:48 AM |
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Sestina – Elizabeth BishopSeptember 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. Time to plant tears, says the almanac.
The grandmother sings to the marvelous stove
and the child draws another inscrutable house.
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A. E. Stallings
Member Posts: 2751
From:Athens, Greece
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted June 07, 2004 09:59 AM |
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I'm so glad Clive dropped in on this thread. I know he has some interesting observations on the sestina as a form, and some insights into writing a successful one, which he might perhaps share.The Elizabeth Bishop is one of the great ones, of course, and fully earns having simply "Sestina" as a title.
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A. E. Stallings
Member Posts: 2751
From:Athens, Greece
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted June 07, 2004 10:09 AM |
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Here is Diane Thiel's fine "Love Letters" from Echolocations:
Love Letters
My mother wanted to learn some German
for my father and because her children
could already speak it a little.
She was tired of dusting stacks of books
she couldn't read, tired of the letters
she always had to ask him to translate. He was usually willing to translate
the cards his mother had written in German.
But sometimes there were other letters,
and when he read them to her and the children
she had the same feeling she'd had with books
before she learned to read, when she was little. She said it bothered her a little
that her own children would have to translate
for her, that they could pick up the same books
that were as Greek to her as they were German.
She started lerning it from her children
and decided to leave my father letters. She wrote my father daily love letters
and carefully placed them on the little
table where they put things for the children
next to our favorite set of translations
of fairy tales we first heard in German.
She leaned one every day against his books, the white paper stark beside the dark books.
But my father never answered her letters.
Instead, he returned them with his German
corrections in the margin, his little
red marks--hieroglyphs for her to translate,
as if she were one of the children. Maybe she was just one of the children
in that house surrounded by rows of books.
Maybe her whole life was a translation
of what she imagined in the letters.
The space between them made her that little
girl, wandering lost inside the German. Because her own children were half-German
she built her life around those little books
translating the lines of her own letters.
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Janet Kenny
Member Posts: 12412
From:Queensland, (was Sydney) Australia
Registered: Dec 2001
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posted June 07, 2004 04:34 PM |
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The Elizabeth Bishop poem is haunting and very Elizabeth Bishop. Wonderful observations, particularly about the child's drawings.
the child draws another inscrutable houseI have to say that Diane Thiel's poem is extraordinary! I have read it before. I don't remember where. It's a novel in a poem. Thank you Clive and Alicia.
Janet [This message has been edited by Janet Kenny (edited June 07, 2004).]
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Henry Quince
Member Posts: 1670
From:Australia
Registered: Aug 2002
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posted June 07, 2004 06:15 PM |
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The usual rotation pattern of end words in each stanza is noted as 615423, using "hindsight" labeling based on the line numbers of the preceding stanza. But if instead you "foresight label" the end-words of this stanza as to their positions in the following one, the sequence is 246531 as Luigi says.I find most sestinas unsatisfying. I started a rhymed one once. Swinburne wrote several, I believe. The one below uses a modified rotation patterm to suit the rhyme. I think this is the only other pattern possible without repeating a permutation of end positions: 614325 (or in "foresight" style, 254361). SESTINA I saw my soul at rest upon a day
....As a bird sleeping in the nest of night,
Among soft leaves that give the starlight way
....To touch its wings but not its eyes with light;
So that it knew as one in visions may,
....And knew not as men waking, of delight. This was the measure of my soul's delight;
....It had no power of joy to fly by day,
Nor part in the large lordship of the light;
....But in a secret moon-beholden way
Had all its will of dreams and pleasant night,
....And all the love and life that sleepers may. But such life's triumph as men waking may
....It might not have to feed its faint delight
Between the stars by night and sun by day,
....Shut up with green leaves and a little light;
Because its way was as a lost star's way,
....A world's not wholly known of day or night. All loves and dreams and sounds and gleams of night
....Made it all music that such minstrels may,
And all they had they gave it of delight;
....But in the full face of the fire of day
What place shall be for any starry light,
....What part of heaven in all the wide sun's way? Yet the soul woke not, sleeping by the way,
....Watched as a nursling of the large-eyed night,
And sought no strength nor knowledge of the day,
....Nor closer touch conclusive of delight,
Nor mightier joy nor truer than dreamers may,
....Nor more of song than they, nor more of light. For who sleeps once and sees the secret light
....Whereby sleep shows the soul a fairer way
Between the rise and rest of day and night,
....Shall care no more to fare as all men may,
But be his place of pain or of delight,
....There shall he dwell, beholding night as day. Song, have thy day and take thy fill of light
....Before the night be fallen across thy way;
Sing while he may, man hath no long delight. A. C. Swinburne http://www.uni.edu/~gotera/CraftOfPoetry/sestina.html has some general info,
with tips on writing sestinas and with links to other examples. You think an ordinary sestina is hard work? Swinburne’s tour de force is a rhymed double sestina: 12X12 +6 = 150 lines! http://eir.library.utoronto.ca/rpo/display/poem2077.html
[This message has been edited by Henry Quince (edited June 07, 2004).]
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Jodie Reyes
Member Posts: 203
From:MA
Registered: Jan 2004
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posted June 07, 2004 06:20 PM |
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I realize that this one will not appeal to everyone, but here's one I enjoy:
http://www.pshares.org/issues/article.cfm?prmArticleID=4668 Two great sestinas come to mind: Hecht's "The Book of Yolek," (unfortunately the very illuminating Partisan Review essay on the poem seems to have been taken down) and Dante Gabriel Rossetti's Sestina Of the Lady Pietra degli Scrovigni [This message has been edited by Jodie Reyes (edited June 07, 2004).]
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Henry Quince
Member Posts: 1670
From:Australia
Registered: Aug 2002
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posted June 07, 2004 06:24 PM |
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Ha! That’s a novel approach to end-words!
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Mark Blaeuer
Member Posts: 256
From:Arkansas, USA
Registered: Apr 2003
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posted June 07, 2004 06:31 PM |
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I like The Whole Truth by James Cummins, a book of sestinas about Perry Mason characters.
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Janet Kenny
Member Posts: 12412
From:Queensland, (was Sydney) Australia
Registered: Dec 2001
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posted June 07, 2004 06:43 PM |
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Jodie,
One of the best laughs I've had for some time. Thank you!
JanetHenry
My advice to Swinburne would be: "stick to the swimming." No that was too harsh. It has beauty but that's the trouble. I do think that "star" references must be rationed.
Janet
[This message has been edited by Janet Kenny (edited June 07, 2004).]
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Diane Dees
Member Posts: 586
From:Covington, LA, USA
Registered: Mar 2004
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posted June 07, 2004 06:49 PM |
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Miller Williams: http://www.geocities.com/bjlandry_00/Otherwriters/williamsshrinkingsestina.html
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A. E. Stallings
Member Posts: 2751
From:Athens, Greece
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted June 07, 2004 11:48 PM |
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One of the amazing things about the Bishop sestina is that there are no gimmicks--all the words are nouns, and none does double duty as some other part of speech or a homophone. I can't imagine pulling that off. But, for me, the problem with writing a sestina is partly one of length. I rarely manage a poem over 20 lines, even without the other constraints.
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Janet Kenny
Member Posts: 12412
From:Queensland, (was Sydney) Australia
Registered: Dec 2001
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posted June 08, 2004 07:12 AM |
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Alicia
I forgot to say how much I liked the John Ashbery. What a wonderfully odd mind he had.Bishop is all you say. There is something prim about her that suits the nouns. But Diane Thiel is so good that the form disappears. I tried to write a sestina today to profit from the discussion. It didn't occur to me to use the virtues you point out in Bishop. I went for near rhyme in order to give the poem some resonance. I now regret it. Next time I'll try a Bishop recipe.
Janet
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Golias
Member Posts: 1065
From:Lewisburg, PA, USA
Registered: Sep 2000
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posted June 08, 2004 08:55 AM |
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Luigi said:
------------------------------------------------
To be honest, I haven't read any good sestinas, so I'm looking forward to seeing what people post.
_________________________________________________...and to be equally honest, I have never read one I considered to be a good poem, either, and don't expect ever to do so. But then I have not read a sestina in several years; not since Bob Mezey referred me to one by Dante and I found it just as artificial and boring as all the others I had read up till then. So now when I see a sestina, I turn the page or close the book. Saves disappointment as well as time. G/W
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Robert E. Jordan
Member Posts: 2165
From:Philadelphia, PA, USA
Registered: Nov 2003
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posted June 08, 2004 12:23 PM |
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I agree with Golias. Sestinas are tiresome to write, and tiresome to read. They follow too much of a formula. They remind me of painting by numbers, mostly appreciated by the writer and the writers close relatives. Here is an entertaining one that pretty well sums them up.MY CONFESSIONAL SESTINA
by
Dana Gioia Let me confess. I'm sick of these sestinas
written by youngsters in poetry workshops
for the delectation of their fellow students,
and then published in little magazines
that no one reads, not even the contributors
who at least in this omission show some taste. Is this merely a matter of personal taste?
I don't think so. Most sestinas
are such dull affairs. Just ask the contributors
the last time they finished one outside of a workshop,
even the poignant one on herpes in that new little magazine
edited by their most brilliant fellow student. Let's be honest. It has become a form for students,
an exercise to build technique rather than taste
and the official entry blank into the little magazines--
because despite its reputation, a passable sestina
isn't very hard to write, even for kids in workshops
who care less about being poets than contributors. Granted nowadays everyone is a contributor.
My barber is currently a student
in a rigorous correspondence school workshop.
At lesson six he can already taste
success having just placed his own sestina
in a national tonsorial magazine. Who really cares about most little magazines?
Eventually not even their own contributors
who having published a few preliminary sestinas
send their work East to prove they're no longer students.
They need to be recognized as the new arbiters of taste
so they can teach their own graduate workshops. Where will it end? This grim cycle of workshops
churning out poems for little magazines
no one honestly finds to their taste?
This ever-lengthening column of contributors
scavenging the land for more students
teaching them to write their boot-camp sestinas? Perhaps there is an afterlife where all contributors
have two workshops, a tasteful little magazine, and sexy students
who worshipfully memorize their every sestina.
------------------
Visit Bobby's Urban Rage Poetry Page at: www.prengineers.com/poetry Thanks
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Tim Murphy
Lariat Emeritus Posts: 8348
From:Fargo ND, USA
Registered: Oct 2000
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posted June 08, 2004 12:34 PM |
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Robert, Thanks so much for posting Dana's sestina, which I haven't had the time to type. A wonderful contribution to this thread. I agree with Alicia's contention that most sestinas are too long. But the exceptions prove the rule:
Gioia's, which is hysterical; and Bishop/ Hecht/ Auden/ Sullivan/ Thiel, which are all affecting. And above all Sir Philip Sydney's, which is simply a triumph of the language.
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Kate Benedict
Moderator Posts: 1941
From:New York, NY, USA
Registered: Oct 2000
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posted June 08, 2004 01:22 PM |
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Though I don't love the sestina as much as the villanelle, I'm certainly glad the form is there for us, to use when we must. A ho-hum sestina is a parlor trick. An excellent one is a tour de force.I never get tired of Sylvia Plath's. I posted this last fall in the Ekrphrastic thread but in case you missed it there: ----------------
I've always admired Sylvia Plath's sestina on a painting by Rousseau. The repetends of the sestina work so well because they stand in for the eye moving around the canvas, looking at each of the elements or colors again and again.
Yadwigha, on a Red Couch, Among Lilies
A Sestina for the Douanier
Yadwigha, the literalists once wondered how you
Came to be lying on this baroque couch
Upholstered in red velvet, under the eye
Of uncaged tigers and a tropical moon,
Set in an intricate wilderness of green
Heart-shaped leaves, like catalpa leaves, and lilies
Of monstrous size, like no well-bred lilies
It seems the consistent critics wanted you
To choose between your world of jungle green
And the fashionable monde of the red couch
With its prim bric-à-brac, without a moon
To turn you luminous, without the eye Of tigers to be stilled by your dark eye
And body whiter than its frill of lilies:
They'd have had yellow silk screening the moon,
Leaves and lilies flattened to paper behind you
Or, at most, to a mille-fleurs tapestry. But the couch
Stood stubborn in its jungle: red against green, Red against fifty variants of green,
The couch glared out at the prosaic eye.
So Rousseau, to explain why the red couch
Persisted in the picture with the lilies,
Tigers, snakes, and the snakecharmer and you,
And birds of paradise, and the round moon, Described how you fell dreaming at full of moon
On a red velvet couch within your green-
Tessellated boudoir. Hearing flutes, you
Dreamed yourself away in the moon's eye
To a beryl jungle, and dreamed that bright moon-lilies
Nodded their petaled heads around your couch. And that, Rousseau told the critics, was why the couch
Accompanied you. So they nodded at the couch with the moon
And the snakecharmer's song and the gigantic lilies,
Marvelingly numbered the many shades of green.
But to a friend, in private, Rousseau confessed his eye
So possessed by the glowing red of the couch which you, Yadwigha, pose on, that he put you on the couch
To feed his eye with red, such red! under the moon,
In the midst of all that green and those great lilies! ---------------
The painting: http://perso.wanadoo.fr/le_douanier_rousseau/liens/freve.htm
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Robert E. Jordan
Member Posts: 2165
From:Philadelphia, PA, USA
Registered: Nov 2003
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posted June 08, 2004 01:26 PM |
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Tim,"The Book of Yolek," by Anthony Hecht I will admit to liking very much. Bobby
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Clive Watkins
Member Posts: 1815
From:UK
Registered: May 2001
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posted June 08, 2004 01:57 PM |
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Dear Tim I agree with Alicia's contention that most sestinas are too long. But the exceptions prove the rule…. But surely all sestinas – that is, single sestinas, the usual form – must, to be sestinas, have exactly thirty-nine lines, six stanzas of six lines and a coda of three: no more, no less. (Of course, badly written poems, even fairly short ones, may seem too long.) The only factor affecting the length of a sestina is the metre used: obviously a sestina in IP will be longer than one in tetrameter. In this connexion, it is worth noting that if IP is used, the repeating words fall further apart and may, in a skilfully made poem, seem less insistent. A successful sestina in trimeter or dimeter – now that would be a tour de force. The most difficult juncture to manage is in my view that between the last line of one stanza and the first line of the next, each of which must end with the same word. Two further thoughts…. First, though, as Alicia points out, Bishop does not do so in her moving poem “Sestina”, it can help to have as repeating words words which can be used as more than one part of speech or which can be combined with other words in plausible compounds or for which there are homophones. Secondly, since the sestina is what I like to call an obsessive form, successful sestinas are likely to explore material that is itself obsessive, so that the necessary fact of repetition becomes rhetorically relevant. (Indeed, in the only sestina I have ever written I sought to make a virtue of this obsessive quality by including in the body of the verse additional repetitions, both of the six key words and of other significant words as well. But then the subject of that poem was an artist friend whose view of her own art is – as she would herself admit - exceedingly obsessive.) Kind regards Clive
[This message has been edited by Clive Watkins (edited June 08, 2004).]
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MacArthur
Member Posts: 1267
From:Portland, Oregon, U.S.A.
Registered: Jan 2001
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posted June 08, 2004 02:16 PM |
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In a form clearly inspired by the sestina:The Silver Age Do not enquire from the centurion nodding
At the corner, with his head gentle over
the swelling breastplate, where true Rome is found.
Even of Livy there are volumes lost.
All he can do is guide you through the moonlight. When he moves, mark how his eager striding,
To which we know the darkness is a river
Sullen with mud, is easy on the ground.
We know it is a river never crossed
By any but some few who hate the moonlight. And when he speaks, mark how his ancient wording
Is hard with indignation of a lover.
'I do not think our new Emporer likes the sound
Of turning squadrons or the last post.
Consorts with Christians, I think he lives in moonlight.' Hurrying to show you his companions guarding,
He grips your arm like a cold strap of leather,
Then halts, earthpale, as he stares round and round.
What made this one fragment of a sunken coast
Remain, far out, to be beaten by moonlight? Thom Gunn [This message has been edited by MacArthur (edited June 08, 2004).]
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Janet Kenny
Member Posts: 12412
From:Queensland, (was Sydney) Australia
Registered: Dec 2001
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posted June 08, 2004 03:02 PM |
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I have been thinking a great deal about my honest responses to sestinas and I have decided that those I do like have succeeded against all odds and in spite of the form, not because of it. John Ashbery was a strange off-the-planet man and this saves his poem from dullness. Diane Thiel's imagination and empathy for her characters rises above the unnecessary straight jacket in which she wrote her poem. I haven't been able to discover the Hecht but would anticipate a combination of the same reasons. I am a Hecht addict.
Janet
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Robert E. Jordan
Member Posts: 2165
From:Philadelphia, PA, USA
Registered: Nov 2003
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posted June 08, 2004 03:06 PM |
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Well, I couldn't leave this without posting the only sestina I really like.The Book of Yolek
Wir haben ein Gesetz,
Una nach dem Gesetz soll er sterben.
( From the German translation of John 19.7
“We have a law, and by that law he ought to die”) by
Anthoney Hecht The dowsed coals fume and hiss after your meal
Of grilled brook trout, and you saunter off for a walk
Down the fern trail, it doesn't matter where to,
Just so you're weeks and worlds away from home,
And among midsummer hills have set up camp
In the deep bronze glories of declining day. You remember, peacefully, an earlier day
In childhood, remember a quite specific meal:
A corn roast and bonfire in summer camp.
That summer you got lost on a Nature Walk;
More than you dared admit, you thought of home;
No one else knows where the mind wanders to. The fifth of August, 1942.
It was morning and very hot. It was the day
They carne at dawn with rifles to The Home
For Jewish Children, cutting short the meal
Of bread and soup, lining them up to walk
In close formation off to a special camp. How often you have thought about that camp,
As though in some strange way you were driven to,
And about the children, and how they were made to walk,
Yolek who had bad lungs, who wasn't a day
Over five years old, commanded to leave his meal
And shamble between armed guards to his long home. We're approaching August again. It will drive home
The regulation torments of that camp
Yolek was sent to, his small, unfinished meal,
The electric fences, the numeral tattoo,
The quite extraordinary heat of the day
They all were forced to take that terrible walk. Whether on a silent, solitary walk
Or among crowds, far off or safe at home,
You will remember, helplessly, that day,
And the smell of smoke, and the loudspeakers of the camp.
Wherever you are, Yolek will be there, too.
His unuttered name will interrupt your meal. Prepare to receive him in your home some day.
Though they killed him in the camp they sent him to,
He will walk in as you're sitting down to a meal.
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Janet Kenny
Member Posts: 12412
From:Queensland, (was Sydney) Australia
Registered: Dec 2001
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posted June 08, 2004 03:14 PM |
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Thread Open 
