[Maryann Corbett]

If we're looking for instruction, there's always this piece from The Barefoot Muse. When I tried the form, I found it useful; the key thing is to plan the envoi first and choose the repetends based on the punchy envoi.

Here's the essay: How to Write a Sestina

The issue it's in has some examples.

[Gregory Dowling]

James Merrill wrote a sestina entitled "Tomorrows" in which the end words are "one, two, three, four, five, six". He allows himself the usually liberties so that, for example, "one" can become "won" and "six "Sikhs". Not one of his greatest poems, but very helpful, if you're trying to learn the rules of the sestina.

[John Hutchcraft]

Signifyin' Monkey
by Michael Donaghy

'Never write a check with your mouth your ass can't cash.'
- Zach Newton

O.K. I'll tell it, but only if you buy lunch.
One summer I worked nights for Vigil-Guard,
the Chicago security firm. The work was easy:
sitting. And close to home. Ten minutes on the train.
And every night I passed the same fluorescent sign
somewhere in Chinatown: FIGHTER MONKEY.

I paid it no mind. It was the year of the monkey.
I thought I'd try it out one day for lunch.
Risky, I figured, but it's always a good sign
if the sign's in English. I wasn't made chief guard
for nothing, you know. It takes a week to train
on half pay so don't think it's all that easy.
Security's an art. I just make it look easy,
like the day I walked home past Fighter Monkey.
Looking back, I wish I'd caught that train,
but I was after a cheap pork feng shui lunch.
Something out front put me on my guard,
though, something about that Day-Glo sign,
the smell, and the cages in the windows, and no sign
of a menu anywhere, which made me a little uneasy,
when out steps this whtie guy built like a bodyguard
wearing a T-shirt showing a shrieking monkey.
He just stands there, chin out. 'Still serving lunch?'
I ask. 'This is no restaurant,' he says. 'I train
animals' - He's got this tight whisper - 'I train
Barbary Apes using American Sign
Language.' O.K. I figure he's out to lunch,
a potential situation. 'Take it easy,'
I tell him. 'I made a mistake. You train monkeys . . .
I represent a firm called Vigil-Guard.'
Turns out he once trained dogs for Vigil-Guard.
And he pays me there and then to help him train
one of his babies, a kind of Rottweiler monkey
that took her orders and talked back in Sign.
I swear she must have weighed forty pounds easy.
And teeth! She could have had me for lunch.
Shit, she could have had me and lunch!
Then he hauls out this heavy, padded armguard.
'Put that on,' he says. 'This part is safe and easy.
She's going to come at you like a freight train.
Freeze.' I remember he laughed as he made the sign.
The asshole. Lost a thumb to his own monkey.

It's easy. Look, he'd been her only trainer.
Guard or no guard, he'd signed 'I'm lunch.'
The blood! Of course they had to shoot the monkey.

[John Hutchcraft]

Anne seemed to be asking about how to write a sestina, so I thought I'd post a link to this oldie-but-goodie thread:
http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/ubbhtm...ML/000469.html

A note on the order of repetitions: The pattern is mathematical.

If you annotated stanza 1 of your sestina like this:

1
2
3
4
5
6

. . . then the annotation for both stanza 1 and 2 would be:

1 6
2 4
3 2
4 1
5 3
6 5

The pattern shows itself in S2 - three even numbers in descending order followed by three odd numbers in ascending order. This accounts for why the last end-word of a stanza always appears as the first end-word of the next.

It also suggests another interesting facet of the sestina, one which is apparent if you keep sketching out the repetends. The first six stanzas would look like this:

1 6 5 3 2 4
2 4 1 6 5 3
3 2 4 1 6 5
4 1 6 5 3 2
5 3 2 4 1 6
6 5 3 2 4 1

Now, here's what it would look like if instead of an envoi a seventh stanza were added:

1 6 5 3 2 4 1
2 4 1 6 5 3 2
3 2 4 1 6 5 3
4 1 6 5 3 2 4
5 3 2 4 1 6 5
6 5 3 2 4 1 6

The seventh stanza would go in the same order as the first, implying that the order would repeat forever. I find that very suggestive. It's a commonplace to say that sestinas (like villanelles and other repeating forms) lend themselves to obsession, but I think they lend themselves equally well, and maybe uniquely, to cycles, and broken cycles. FWIW!

[This message has been edited by John Hutchcraft (edited May 05, 2008).]

[Anne Bryant-Hamon]

Thanks John (and Maryann)

Anne

[Roger Slater]

". . . then the annotation for both stanza 1 and 2 would be:

1 6
2 4
3 2
4 1
5 3
6 5"

John, that's not my understanding. This is what the first two stanzas of most sestinas I have seen looks like:

1 6
2 1
3 5
4 2
5 4
6 3

Then the same pattern continues. The first line of each stanza ends with the same word as the last line of the preceding stanza. So far we are in agreement. But the second line of each stanza ends with the same word as the first line of the preceding stanza. And the third line of each stanza ends with the same word as the last word of the second to last line of the preceding stanza, etc.

[John Hutchcraft]

Hell, Roger, I might've misremembered it. Or there might be two methods. Yours is still a circular pattern, and very mathematical if I'm understanding it right. Descending "high numbers" 6, 5, 4, alternating with ascending "low numbers" 1, 2, 3.

Interesting to contemplate that there might be more than one way to skin this particular cat.

[Michael Cantor]

You misremembered, John. Roger's is the correct format.

[John Hutchcraft]

How about if instead of saying I misremembered it, Michael, we just say I 'invented a nonce sestina form'? That has such a nicer ring to it!

[Roger Slater]

I've invented the curtal sestina. Each of the first six lines ends with a different word, and then the poem is over.