[Anne Bryant-Hamon]

Originally posted by Jan D. Hodge:
Mark Strand solved the "problem" of the sestina by writing his in prose. See his "Chekhov: A Sestina" in <u>The Continuous Life</u>.

Thanks for the resource. I'll have to check that out.

Anne

[John Whitworth]

The best ones are by Auden, don't You think? I've writen a few but only one I liked. Here it is:

Red-eye

My red-eyed laughing barber cared but little
What skulls he clipped, what chins & cheeks he shaved.
My mother packed me off when I was small,
Short back & sides she told him. He was pale,
His slightly smaller left red-eye was real,
He unscrewed the right right out when I was older,

When the asymmetry made him look that much older,
Then eased his pinkie moistened with a little
Vaseline over the unwinking glass, his real
Left eye, red-eye, observing. I, half-shaved,
My moony mirrored face as pocky pale
As a goat's cheese, I was watching too. Some small

(Probably venomous) insect buzzed & I thought how small,
How bright, how intricate as we grow older,
It shines, the old innocence beyond the pale.
We yearn back to the abandoned city, dinky little
Streets, warm intimate squares, well-shaved
Lawns & rank on rank of improbable flowers real

Life can never beat - what is as real
As your misremembered bliss at being small?
Why I used to watch my father while he shaved,
Asked could I strop the razor? When you're older.
But I won't want to do it then. You peel back little
Scabs off your knees & the skin there, it's all pale,

It's shiny, not like proper skin, it's pale,
It's dead like paper, shiny & unreal.
Most nights I wake round four to little
Sighs & squeaks & settlings. Being small
Just stops being an option when you're older,
When the family needs you showered & shat & shaved,

It's a man thing, see. My red-eyed barber shaved,
Talked, laughed & snipper-snippered. Moony, pale,
Behind thick drawn curtains something whispers: older,
Unwiser & twenty thousand times more real.
You've given away the job of being small
For ever, friend, but you have to laugh a little.

Red-eye, you laugh a little now you're shaved,
You carry your small guts round in a pail.
Nothing is real, you learn that when you're older.

[Janet Kenny]

John,
There are some gems in this. Would you have conjured up this one-eyed barber without the steeplechase of the sestina?
When the family needs you showered & shat & shaved
Love it.
Janet

[John Whitworth]

Yeah, Janet. I'm glad you like it and, frankly, so do I. And, no, it wouldn't have come without the sestina form. The same is true, I'm sure, of the Auden one about the vats. He conjured it out of a bunch of six words. I think I mightlike to try the Swinburne test - write a rhymed sestina. I've always felt Swinburne is underrated. He took rhyme and metre to places no-one els did - except W.S. Gilbert, (another true poet and better than Swinburne). In my view the poets and the artists since then have far too often committed the Treason of the Clerks and sold out to the Powerful. You see them trotting along behind the fascists of the right and left, mostly left these days since Adolf was seen off so comprehensively AND NOT BY THEM. Perhaps I am ranting a bit but the forts are in enemy hands here and in the Antipodes. Dammit you have to go to the United States to find Eratosphere.

It was my old boss, not many inches from a crook, but a man I worked for for a dozen unforgettable years (unforgettable however hard I try heh heh), who gave me that shit showered and shaved thing - just waiting for a poem to put them in. He also had this little mantra before he left the house or the office of the country. Spectacles, testicles, wallet and watch, Not orignal, I'm sure, but what mastery of form! Three dactyls and a final thump.

[Michael Cantor]

Here's one that's rhymed and metrical, but awfully crowded - possibly too ponderous. I've never found a home for it.

Hexagram

“An eruv is a bounded space within which Jews who adhere to traditional religious law can "carry" objects in public spaces on the Sabbath...Its boundary is a real physical entity… walls, trees, telephone wires... lengths of twine.” (The Community Eruv)

Among the ultra-Orthodox, the eruv line
defines a circumscribed community; confined
by fences, walls, and twisted lengths of plastic twine.
Here, the certitudes of God, of man and mind,
swirl and spin about each other in a ring
of tightly argued logic; here, wise scholars string

out meditations on the nature of each string
that dangles from the tzitzit: kabalistic line
of calculations follows line until the ring
of elders chanting evening prayers will fail to find
its place or peace. And here, though none have undermined
the Sabbath laws, the laws themselves may now entwine

with logic that extends all boundaries; lets twine
assign what man designs. But Saturdays, the string
bikinis shining by the green-blue sea remind
observant boardwalk walkers that the eruv line
that runs along Miami Beach is less defined,
more serpentine; that here a woman’s diamond ring

may navigate her waist and hips, that cell phones ring
on Shabos, almost-naked joggers sweat white wine.
Among the skull caps, curls and caftans, unrefined
turistas slouch: Brazilians, Russians, gangsters. String-
thin, vaguely Asian models navigate their in-line
skates past beaver-hatted dandies; none pay mind

to women who, in sheitels and Versace, mind
long ranks of strollers. Further south, the nipple ring
personifies the Beach. The smoke, the toke, the line
of coke, the all-night clubs where genders intertwine
in every combination: now a gleaming string
of dancers roams the floor, and calls, and seeks to find

more partners – in the eruv! – purpose undefined,
but none here come here with Kabala on their mind.
Yet, the scene is like those paintings where a string
of pious sages levitates to form a ring
around the moon. Freed from their cage of bits of twine,
they soar as eagles, far above the earth-bound line.

Will mankind find a resurrected ancient ring,
where zealots, drunk on God and mind, can intertwine
inside the eruv? Or is it all a line of string?



[This message has been edited by Michael Cantor (edited May 01, 2008).]

[Roger Slater]

Michael, that's real good. One of the few sestinas I've chosen to read in its entirety, and I enjoyed it. Perhaps it would find a home without the envoi, or with a rewrite of the envoi, which for me was a three line disappointment after 36 strong lines.

[Michael Cantor]

Roger - thanks for the encouragement. I agree completely about the envoi. It just clunks. I haven't looked at this one for a while - more or less gave up on it - and I will try a rewrite on the envoi. Or possibly use your other suggestion, and just snip it off. (Surely, in a poem like this, there's a place for a mohel.)

[John Whitworth]

Looking more closely at the string see that Janet wrote a splendid rhymed sestina. I think, as she hints, that the problem is to prevent them getting ponderous and DULL. I don't think Mochael's is either of these things I love it.

[Janet Kenny]

Michael,
Yours is just wonderful! I had a rebellious Jewish friend who was driven insane by her relatives' orthodox practices. Pity she's not with us still. She'd have loved this one. I remember it from the last time you posted it.
Janet

[Anne Bryant-Hamon]

John and Michael -

I enjoyed both of your sestina offerings. They are definitely not boring. Each of them demonstrates that sestinas can rise above the common-place theme and satiate the reader's desire for mental stimulation. So I won't completely dismiss the form from my life, but likely won't write any myself for a long, long, long time to come.

Thanks for sharing them with us.
Anne