* Learning about Sestina ...

I've been learning about Sestinas.  Today I wrote my first one.  It surprised me.  Below the sestina is an explanation of how they are structured, in case, like me, you may not have heard of them before.

The words I chose at random were: 

Home
Man
Woman
Ocean
Clouds
Waves

Untitled

June 18th had come again to her home
She didn't want to remember the man
She wished she would not remember the woman
Perhaps a walk by the ocean
Where she could see the clouds
And hear the waves.

She imagined the sound of pounding waves
As she left her home.
Rain fell heavily from the clouds
In her heart she carried the man
Down to the ocean
Where she could free him to be with the woman.

She wanted to weep, but the woman
could be heard in the pounding waves.
She cried as she walked farther from her home
and closer to the ocean
The rain poured from the clouds
and she heard the heartbreak of the man.

She tried to walk away, but the man
Became the voice of the woman.
The rain became her tears from the clouds.
Her heart the pounding of the waves
She tried to run home
She was engulfed by the ocean.

You cannot stay with me, said the ocean
And you must walk away from the man
to allow him to be with his woman
Don't go home
Drown in the clouds
Become the waves

Her tears became the waves
Eaten by the ocean
She tried to find her man
The earth became the clouds
The man took the hand of the woman
She couldn't find her home.

She walked into the waves of the ocean
Her heart carried her man into the clouds
No longer could she carry the woman
She walked home.
                                

A sestina is based on sixes.  It has six unrhymed stanzas of six lines each in which the words at the ends of the first stanza’s lines recur in a rolling pattern at the ends of all the other lines.  The sestina then concludes with a tercet (a three line stanza) that uses all six end-words, two to a line.  The diagram that follows will probably help you to see what I’m talking about.  (And thanks to the Handbook of Poetic Forms for giving me this diagram and explanation)

In the diagram, the letters A-F stand for the six end-words of the sestina,

Stanza 1:  A
                B
                C
                D
                E
                F

Stanza 2:   F
                  A
                  E
                  B
                  D
                  C

Stanza 3:    C
                   F
                   D
                   A
                   B
                   E

Stanza 4:    E
                   C
                   B
                   F
                   A
                   D

Stanza 5:    D
                   E
                   A
                   C
                   F
                   B

Stanza 6:     B
                    D
                    F
                    E
                    C
                    A

Tercet:     AB
                CD
                 EF


The way you write a sestina, is to first choose six words that will be your end words.  Then, label them A, B, C, etc.  Then, you follow the pattern of the stanzas, and let your poem unfold.   After you write your first stanza, you might want to write down all the end-words, in correct rotation, over on the right hand side of the page.

My own experience in writing sestinas is that a story often develops, in unexpected ways.  And, if f I choose end-words that have some physical substance  (like tree, or table)  and are in some ways connected (to me) to something I  want to write about that I know is challenging for me, the sestina allows me to uncover truths I wouldn’t have gotten to in any other way.