[Frank Hubeny]

Originally posted by Anne Bryant-Hamon:

I'm wondering whether you and Barbara and Janet randomly chose 6 words and began writing, or if you thought about what you'd like to write about and then chose 6 words?

I started with the first stanza and then, painstakingly, tried to figure out which end-word had to go on which succeeding line. That ordering was the most difficult part of the challenge. I kept getting the permutations wrong. So the chosen words were whatever worked in the first stanza.

I did choose the end-words to be simple rhymes to add some repeated sound to the sestina, which I think it lacks. I also shortened the lines to tetrameter and repeated the 6th line in the 1st of the next stanza. All that is not in the original rule.

To me, the sestina is a mathematical pattern that has no sound (metrical/poetic) value associated with the permutation of the end words. And that makes me question whether the sestina is a true form rather than merely an arbitrary rule.

Meter in a language is more than the description of it, that is, more than the number of syllables, accents, alliterations, rhymes, or repetitions that are detected by those scanning the poem. It is something that is pleasing to the ear of many native listeners, which may turn out to be not easily scanned.

The sestina, however, starts with an arbitrary description rather than a pleasing pattern already in existence in the language. Adding the false assumption that the existence of a description implies the existence of a poetic form, one gets the false conclusion that the sestina is a poetic form. To my ear, the sestina, as a rule, is unlikely to succeed as a form in any language.

The rhymed example by Swinburne that Henry Quince mentioned in the thread he cited I thought was interesting, but even with that example, I don't see why the permutation of the end-words was necessary. The arbitrary rule got in the way even there. Nor do I see the benefit of adding this end-word permutation constraint to anything written in free or blank verse.

Thanks for the challenge, Anne. It was the only sestina I've ever written.




[This message has been edited by Frank Hubeny (edited April 20, 2008).]

[Frank Hubeny]

Nice retelling of the Jack and Jill story, Barbara.

[Anne Bryant-Hamon]

Originally posted by Frank Hubeny:
Nice retelling of the Jack and Jill story, Barbara.

I agree, the retelling of something familiar to me made it more enjoyable. Way to go Barbara. I will be working on mine this week.

Frank, I tend to agree with your thoughts about the sestina. I think it is "a kind of poem" (if we don't want to include it in formal poetry) that can only rarely succeed as a very good poem that people would want to read again and again. That's how classics are made - you want to read them again and again.

Henry, I glanced at the first link and wondered what all the Bobbing was about. I'll have to check more into this stuff later - it is past my bed-time.

Thanks everybody!

Watch this space this week for my upcoming sestina, but don't set your hopes too high!

Anne

[Barbara Godwin]

Thanks Frank and Anne. Jack and Jill were the first things that came to mind when I saw your end words. I don't know what I think about Sestinas either. They're a fun challenge to write, but I don't usually keep them afterwards.

Barbara

[Anne Bryant-Hamon]

Hello, Barbara -

Sorry this was so long in coming. I had a sinus headache for most of the week, but still had to be at work. I find it difficult to write when I have a headache. Excuses, excuses, everyone has one!

And may I say, I don't much care for the result of this exercise for myself - meaning, I ain't crazy about the sestina I made with these end words, mostly because it sounds redundant (and perhaps corny, though I do believe what I'm saying in it). For time's sake, I'm going to leave the all caps since you don't mind them anyway - and also, I'm pretty sure I made a mistake in my 7th stanza, but am sick to death of the sestina so I am not going to fix it.
And now that the into is over... here she is:

From land and sea a melting pot was made
Of people stirred together of every kind
Of tongue and tribe and race without a home
To call their own. They sailed in search of joy
Or something not delivered by an angel –
For justice from a litany of wrongs.

Each one was dealt a smattering of wrongs
Men measured out on nations that were made
A wasteland. It’s quite rare that there’s an angel
With power on the earth, whose ways are kind
Where righteousness leads people into joy,
That earth might be for all a happy home.

But Jesus said this world was not his home,
His followers would suffer many wrongs.
They’d learn to look inside for lasting joy.
And for our growth this trial of time God made.
Though often God’s plan doesn’t feel so kind.
Yet He has promised each a guardian angel.

Though Jesus did not call upon his angel
To save him when he’d left his heavenly home.
He trusted that his Father’s plan was kind,
And that He would eventually right the wrongs
That come upon us all. For we were made
To bear the earthly image first. What joy

Shall fill us as we drink of heaven’s joy
And join the ecstasy known to the angels.
It was for joy that everything was made.
Our Father plans to bring us safely home,
To wash away all pain and tears and wrongs
We have endured. And we shall be a kind

Of heavenly being. Each seed begets its kind.
In Father’s house there is eternal joy,
For nothing vile can enter – and no wrongs
Shall ever hurt us there. We shall be angels
who sing forever in our heavenly home.
It was for love and joy that we were made.

For joy we have been made lower than angels,
But only in this temporal earthly home.
The wrongs we suffer shall teach us what is kind.

[Barbara Godwin]

Sorry you had a headache. I like yours a lot better than mine. Barbara

[Jan D. Hodge]

...

[This message has been edited by Jan D. Hodge (edited May 09, 2008).]

[Frank Hubeny]

Originally posted by Jan D. Hodge:

......Is woman languid if she’s but midwest lively,
......or midwest man divorced from all things wise
......and beautiful?

Nice lines!

[Anne Bryant-Hamon]

Dear Exuberant Divorced Worldly Woman,

Jan,

Are you talking to me?! Kidding. Thanks for sharing this. I'm convinced for sure that I don't like writing sestinas. I much prefer letting others write them!

Hope you had a nice vacation. And thank you for sending the lovely poetry cards - they're beautiful, and that was so kind of you.

Okay, whose going to write the next sestina? For my part, I'm leaving that up to my double/twin.

Cheers!
Anne

[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>.