What Kind of Sestina Poet Are You?

A Sestina is a detailed poetic form involving intricate repetitions of six different words.

The inventor of this form was Arnaut Daniel, who belonged to a group of twelfth-century poets--the troubadours. The troubadour name is extracted from the verb trobar, which means "to invent or compose verse." Troubadours competed with one another to produce the wittiest, most elaborate, most difficult styles - and thus one of the troubadours started the Sestina style.

More Modern Sestina Styling

In more modern times, the Sestina still exists, but tends to be treated differently by different poets. Some poets think it is important to stick to the exact same details as the original Sestina form; some poets allow a small amount of flexibility to those details. Some work on Sestinas planning to create a finished Sestina piece; others think the finished piece might seem too artificial, but is still a good form to work on, because even if it does not create a finished Sestina, it serves as an interesting poetic exercise.

Either way, it can offer a productive amalgam of word powers, helping you concentrate in ways that make your brain deliver some interestingly unique word usage and lines. As a poet myself, I've found out that even if my Sestina does not end up working out as a very affective or powerful poem, it still created some wonderfully creative lines that can then be used within my own form of poetry.

Whether you are planning on writing a tried and true Sestina poem or using the Sestina form as a kind of writing exercise, it can be a rather difficult and complex poetic form, but oftentimes complexity is not a bad thing for creative writers. Complexity sometimes gets creative juices flowing. Complexity often offers a unique dig into areas one might not ordinarily explore, and who knows what might be discovered during that digging? It just might be something spectacular.

Specific Sestina Form Details

Whether you are attempting to create your own finished Sestina or whether you are using the form as a sort of exercise, you must still be prepared to spend plenty of time and energy concentrating on Sestina formations.

So what are the specific details of that Sestina form?

Well, it is a poem that consists of six six-line stanzas and then one three-line triplet called an envoy, which is a concluding stanza that is half the size of the rest.

It is usually unrhymed, the effect of rhyme being taken over by a fixed pattern of six end words. The six end words in each stanza are the same, but are arranged in a different sequence with each stanza.

Those six end words are used at the end of the six-lines of each stanza in the following order:

1. ABCDEF

2. FAEBDC

3. CFDABE

4. ECBFAD

5. DEACFB

6. BDFECA

After those six lines, the envy is the seventh shorter stanza that concludes your poem. Although it is a shorter stanza, it might be even more difficult, because it consists of only three lines, using all six of your end words - the ECA or BDC words used at the end of lines 1,2,3 but ALSO the other three end words buried in each line of the envoy. There are some slightly different envoy versions or slight flexibility with that part of the Sestina structure, but basically you are using two of your six words in each of the last three lines of your poem.

Although specific line length is not a requirement of the Sestina form, some poets try to use similar length for each line for the sake of appearance and because that also tends to make your poem's details more concise in terms of the content's accuracy and power.

As for the six words you choose to use, that choice is up to you. Some writers choose their six end words before they get to work on writing the poem; others might work on a different form of poem (or a non-form poem) and then work on turning that into a Sestina. Some writers are a little more experimental with the Sestina, being willing to slightly modify their six end words. Other writers use the exact same end words throughout all seven stanzas.

I say give your own Sestina a try and see what happens next.

What kind of Sestina poet are you?

Click below for a Sestina sample to wet your whistle:

http://www.mcsweeneys.net/links/sestinas/16SharonDolin.html

I used the following online sources to help with this article:

http://www.public.asu.edu/~aarios/formsofverse/reports2000/page9.html

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/5792

http://writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/sestina.html

http://www.uni.edu/~gotera/CraftOfPoetry/sestina.html