The Sestina
Poetry I am told feels a bit alien to a lot of people,
and the idea of using a structured form seems pointless and
unnecessarily difficult. It won’t be something everyone comes back to -
but after explaining what it is, I have used the poem I have posted as
an example you might want to try :)
The
sestina is a 6 stanza plus ‘envoi’ poem. ‘Envoi’ in this case is a sort
of three line recap. You don’t have to rhyme, you can pick your number
of syllables per line - your meter…. Eg pentameter is five ‘units’ of
rhythm, and a ‘unit’ of rhythm can be for example a pair of stressed and
unstressed syllables
(di-dum di-dum di-dum di-dum di-dum being Iambic Pentameter because of the order of stressed and unstressed syllables)
The
poem only uses 6 ‘end words’ – literally the last word of each line -
repeated in a set formula pattern, and uses the words in the same order
as the first Stanza (although this can vary) in the last 3 lines .
The order of the end words is set in that pattern - use numbers 1-6 if that makes more sense to you.
Using my poem as an example the end words are as follows (which you sort of hope people don’t notice)
A cigarette
B one
C spent
D fire
E close
F set
F set
A cigarette
E close
B one
D fire
C spent
C spent
F set
D fire
A cigarette
B one
E close
E close
C spent
B one
F set
A cigarette
D fire
D fire
E close
A cigarette
C spent
F set
B one
B one
D fire
F set
E close
C spent
A cigarette
AB cigarette, one
CD spent fire
EF end set
It is almost like a spiral of words (if that is a helpful image) and the tricks are
- firstly to chose your ‘end words’ quite carefully, using words that have several meanings - like set, which has the most dictionary defined meanings I learned, and or words that have homophones (one/won, vain/vein. Whine/wine which are permissible variants to the form )
- you could use end words which have a some overlapping or connected meaning – spent /end/close,
- very careful use of caesura (pauses using full stops/commas/colons) and lines. By this I mean that for a poem to make sense you don’t read it line by line, you read it grammatically as you would a piece of prose. This way the end word don’t seem too obvious (or at least that’s the aim)…
so you could read a piece of poetry like this,
with commas at the end of every line,
and then you’ll find that nothing goes amiss,
but you might have a verse which doesn’t rhyme.
Or
You could read a piece of poetry. Like
this. Not commas at the end
of every line. And then you’ll find
that nothing goes
amiss; but you might have
a verse that doesn’t rhyme.
You
are still able to follow the meaning. The example above shows how that
can impact the way you write, the sound and the sense (it doesn’t mean I
think its good – or not good - or that these lines make sense, its
just an example of what to think about )
And
if you do give yourself a syllable limit (iambic pentameter being the
fave for many because it is naturally very close to normal English
speech pattern) there’s likely to be more rhythm and completeness in
your poem – but not always
There are other types of formal structure like a villanelle, A pantoum, Sonnet,
all of which are also shorter – if that sounds preferable
The
discipline of writing in a formal way actually helped in writing this I
think, and the structure definitely came first, which sounds like it
might be artificial but it still conveys a sense and meaning ( mostly)
and all language we use is confined in rules of syntax grammar and
spelling – so think of it as an extension of that.
In
this poem I thought of the end words first, wanted it keep it mostly
easy but then thought I better give myself something more jarring to see
if it flowed – so threw ‘cigarette’ in because I had the image of a
spiral like a spiral of cigarette smoke. That made me think of a
conversation I’d had once in a coffee bar and that lead to thinking of
bits and pieces of other peoples relationship endings - this is not
autobiographical, and not meant to be an angsty outlet, but this – and
any poem – is meant to be about distilling an idea/ideas into a poetic
form to create an emotional resonance with the reader and using the form
to help in that – otherwise write prose. A sestina just gives you a
frame to hang it on. I had to edit this poem and double check on grammar
and line breaks – and I think there are still some dodgy moments – but
it felt like going through the task really helped me think about line
and form generally – and was well worth doing for me for that reason
alone.
wow, maybe you could do a session on this in one of the group meetings? I would love that. It's alot to take in and I think doing it might help!
ReplyDeleteRachel