Last night, I took my first stab at a sestina (I'm trying to be a big girl), and I thought it was going swimmingly. In fact, even though I had to get up at 6am to wake the boys for their first day of school, I stayed up until 1 working on a draft. I thought it was workable then, but today I decided: if not for the tornada, I’d find nothing redeeming about the sestina. Anger danger-mouse! I’m still in poet training pants!
In any case, I’m clearly tired and tantrum-ing, but I’d love to hear how other people have approached the sestina…anyone? The villanelle, the pantoum, the ghazal…I’m okay with these, but the sestina? Vixen.
As for the early morning, it was more emotional than I thought it would be. My oldest started high school, the youngest middle school; no one’s a baby anymore (well, except me). I think even the cat felt some twinge of sadness. She sat in a box in front of the door, knowing they were packing up to leave. When they closed the door behind them, she ran to her living room window to watch them walk up the drive.
I took pictures before they left. Yes, it went over really well. At least they smiled.
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3 comments:
Sounds like you could use a consultation with Professor Thayer.
Is Casey writing sestinas these days...I've never seen him write in form. And did he get a teaching gig? Little Casey, all grown up. :)
It's an impossible thing to do I think. I've written three, and am passably happy with one. I can think of two that are really excellent: Elizabeth Bishop's "A Miracle for Breakfast," and Donald Justice's "Sestina on Six Words from Weldon Kees" (which I like more than "Here in Katmandu" and "Dream Sestina").
John Poch and Chad Davidson both have ones that both end with numbers: one, two, three, four, five six. Chad's is in Last Predicta, and John's in Two Men Fighting w/ a Knife. There's that goofy Ashbery one about Popeye.
The only recommendations I have are to be as random as possible with your word choices so as not to paint yourself into a corner with intention. And pick words that are themselves flexible. The numbers work because you can play a little: one, won, wan; two, too, to; etc.
I also like what Richard Wilbur, probably our great 20th century master of forms, says. It's something about how his goal was never to be a master of forms for their sake. A poem's form suggests itself in line, meter, and sonority within a few lines. By then he'll know what it is, but rarely will it organize itself towards a sestina. If it did, it would be an accident.
On the other hand, Justice wrote most of a book by dealing out of a deck of cards he made that contained words, images, subjects, rhymes, and other ideas. He'd deal out a phrase or two, start writing on it, and see what happens.
Who knows.
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