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What is a sestina?

The Internet provides dozens of definitions of the sestina. Here are some:

# Usually an unrhymed poem consisting of six stanzas made up of six lines each. The sestina employs word repetition rather than rhyme. The end word of each line of the first stanza is repeated in a different order in each of the following five stanzas. This form was invented by the troubadour poet Arnaud Daniel. Examples of sestina include ‘Complaint of Lisa’ by Swinburne (a double rhymed sestina) and ‘Paysage Moralisé’ by Auden.
http://www.poetsgraves.co.uk/glossary_poetic_terms_s.htm

Note added by John Tranter: John Ashbery (in his book Flow Chart) copied out the end-words of Swinburne’s double sestina and wrote his own poem, filling in the blank spaces before each end word with his own words. He has said that he avoided reading Swinburne’s poem, not wanting to be influenced by it.

Here is the first stanza of Swinburne’s double sestina:

There is no woman living that draws breath
So sad as I, though all things sadden her.
There is not one upon life’s weariest way
Who is weary as I am weary of all but death.
Toward whom I look as looks the sunflower
All day with all his whole soul toward the sun;
While in the sun’s sight I make moan all day,
And all night on my sleepless maiden bed
Weep and call out on death, O Love, and thee,
That thou or he would take me to the dead,
And know not what thing evil I have done
That life should lay such heavy hand on me.

And here is the first stanza of Ashbery’s, from Flow Chart (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991. 186.)

We’re interested in the language, that you call breath,

if breath is what we are to become, and we think it is, the southpaw said. Throwing her

a bone sometimes, sometimes expressing, sometimes expressing something like mild concern, the way

has been so hollowed out by travelers it has become cavernous. It leads to death.

We know that, yet for a limited time only we wish to pluck the sunflower,

transport it from where it stood, proud, erect, under a bungalow-blue sky, grasping at the sun,

and bring it inside, as all others sink into the common mold. The day

had begun inauspiciously, yet improved as it went along, until at bed-

time it was seen that we had prospered, I and thee.

Our early frustrated attempts at communicating were in any event long since dead.

Yet I had prayed for some civility from the air before setting out, as indeed my ancestors had done

and it hadn’t hurt them any. And I purposely refrained from consulting me.

John Tranter’s sestina link Christopher Brennan (1870-1932) is available on this site.
Here is the first stanza:

He spoke German,
fluently, and French.
One he got by study,
the other from an inclination to drink
absinthe, like the poets who were always writing
among the cafés and the bottles and the crowds of women.

Further definitions from the Internet:

# Sestina: A fixed form consisting of six 6-line (usually unrhymed) stanzas in which the end words of the first stanza recur as end words of the following five stanzas in a successively rotating order and as the middle and end words of each of the lines of a concluding envoi in the form of a tercet. http://www.poeticbyway.com/gl-s.html

First stanza, 1- 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6
Second stanza, 6 - 1 - 5 - 2 - 4 - 3
Third stanza, 3 - 6 - 4 - 1 - 2 - 5
Fourth stanza, 5 - 3 - 2 - 6 - 1 - 4
Fifth stanza, 4 - 5 - 1 - 3 - 6 - 2
Sixth stanza, 2 - 4 - 6 - 5 - 3 - 1

Concluding tercet:

middle of first line - 2, end of first line - 5
middle of second line - 4, end of second line - 3
middle if third line - 6, end of third line - 1

# A complicated verse structure of six 6-line stanzas all which share the same three pairs of rhyme-words appearing in a different order in each stanza.
http://www.auburn.edu/~bertocr/glossary.html

# an elaborate verse structure written in blank verse that consists of six stanzas of six lines each followed by a three-line stanza. The final words of each line in the first stanza appear in variable order in the next five stanzas, and are repeated in the middle and at the end of the three lines in the final stanza, as in Elizabeth Bishop’s ‘Sestina’.
http://www.wwnorton.com/introlit/glossary/glossary_s.asp

# A poem of thirty-nine lines and written in iambic pentameter. Its six-line stanza repeat in an intricate and prescribed order the final word in each of the first six lines. After the sixth stanza, there is a three-line envoi, which uses the six repeating words, two per line.
http://highered.mcgraw-hill.com/sites/0072405228/student_view0/poetic_glossary.html

# "song of sixes," a medieval verse form of six six-line stanzas, in which the poet repeats six end-words in a prescribed order, reintroducing the six repeated words (in any order) in a closing three line envoy.
http://academics.hamilton.edu/english/ckodat/150Wlitterm.html

# a 7 stanza poem with 6 six-lined stanzas and an ending three-lined stanza; rhyme scheme is a difficult rotating repetition of the same end words rather than true rhyme.
http://research.uvsc.edu/mortensen/2250/assignments/poetryvocab.html

# The sestina is an highly structured form of poetry, dating back to the 12th century. It consists of thirty-nine lines; six six-line stanzas ending with a triplet. There are no restrictions on line length, although, in English, the sestina is most commonly written in iambic pentameter or in decasyllabic meters.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sestina

Notes compiled by John Tranter, September 2005.

http://april.edu.au/2form/sestina.shtml