Poet's Workshop

photo by Gerry Williams

How to Write a Sestina by Terrie Leigh Relf ©2002 All rights reserved

What, you’re probably asking, is a sestina?

According to Lewis Turco in The New Book of Forms, the sestina is "highly artificial" and "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" (see RÍos’ site below for a detailed description and guidelines).

Originally accompanied by music, the creation of this form is attributed to a 12th Century French Troubadour by the name of Arnaut Daniel. He is said to have been a mathematician, possessed of a great sense of humor, and a bit on the randy side.

From what I’ve read about this form, I can’t stop thinking about Slams…There is a definite "competitive" quality (traditionally) to the sestina, as it was a form of courtly entertainment (remember they didn’t have wide screen TVs, video stores, etc.). Sestinas usually tell a story, hence their historical linkage with the troubadour tradition. The ballade, which often has end rhymes, is a closely related form, but without the "end word" restrictions. I often think of these forms as prose poems and the precursor to the current concept of the short story.

How to proceed?

Since the first stanza sets the "end words" which are used throughout the poem, work up a few to choose from. You really need to begin with a strong stanza that provides the setting, the characters, the conflict, and the mood or tone. Knowing where you’re going is helpful, too, but I still believe in writing as discovery, which is the way it usually works for me. I change my plots quite often—sometimes revise them right out of existence!

I have left the letter grid intact with my sestina, so that you can see how the pattern is manipulated. Once again, this insomniac pens another poem about sleep…

Angel of Shadows
A   I have been with angels of darkness and of light,
B  but it is the Angel of Shadows who loves me.
C  He is at the center of my recurring dreams,
D   the one who soothes my tortured sleep,
E    the bridge connecting this realm to the next,
F    who stands sentry at the gateway to this world.

F   Fascinated by this other world,
A   that dwells within fragmented rays of light,
E   I make my way down one step, then the next,
B    while he waits to gather me
D    into a deeper, pearl gray sleep,
C    then binds us together in each other’s dreams.

C   "Yes," he urges me, "yes, embrace these dreams
F   where we may create our own special world.
D   Without our minds linked thus, in shadowed sleep,
A   the Angels of Darkness and of Light
B   would steal you away from me,
E   then wager who gets you first, then next."

E   "If not this night, then perhaps the next
C   we will hold fast within our dreams.
B   There is another way, please trust me!
F   Far, far away from this known world,
A   there is a spell to stave off blinding light.
D   Meet me there, meet me at the edge of sleep."

D   And so I toss and turn, refuse to sleep,
E   cast runes to reveal what will befall us next.
A   I open the window, gaze upon la luna’s light,
C   beseech the tides to carry me into your dreams!
F   I am weary of this wakeful world;
B   nothing beckons to or seduces me.

B   "Angel of Shadows, come to me!
D   Bind us together in that blissful shroud of sleep;
F   usher me into your idyllic world,
E   where mysteries are unveiled, knots untangled next.
C   Is it only within this place of dreams,
A   that light is darkness, darkness light?"

B E    He breathes into me, and with the next
D C    triumphant moment, in sleep, in dreams,
F A    we enter a peaceful world, a velvet alchemy of dark and light.

Visit these sites for examples!
Albert RÍos has an excellent academic site on sestinas, which includes historical information on the art of the Troubadour, traditional poetic forms, commentary by the proverbial experts in the field, and a wealth of examples: http://www.public.asu.edu/~aarios/formsofverse/reports2000/page9.html

This site has links to works by Edmund Spenser, Elizabeth Allen and Algernon Swinburne:
http://www.emic-zine.com/Sestinas.htm

A "must have" is Lewis Turco’s The Book of Forms: A Handbook of Poetics (Note: If anyone wants to buy me a present, I want this! I need this!):
http://www.dartmouth.edu/acad-inst/upne/1-58465-022-2.html

Here’s a nice sestina about a grandmother and her granddaughter by Elizabeth Bishop:
http://www.sccs.swarthmore.edu/users/03/ahead/sestina.html

I finally found Bobs byway’s Glossary of Poetic Terms again! Here it is:
http://shoga.wwa.com/~rgs/glossary.html

Here’s the "All-American Sestina" by Florence Cassen Myers to show you how the form can be varied:
http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/poetry/antholog/mayers/sestina.htm

And here’s another fine example with Scott Reid’s "Sestina in the Computer Age":
http://www.sonic.net/~scotts/sestina.html