The Six-Stanza Sestina

The sestina, which originated in France, is an unrhymed form of poetry.  The poem is six stanzas long with each stanza containing six lines; a three line envoy completes the poem.  Just as every line of a pantoum is repeated later in the poem, the final word of each line of a sestina is repeated later in the poem.  Once again, patterning comes into play.  Here is the pattern of the words in a sestina:

123456

615243

364125

532614

451362

246531

(62) (14) (53)

John Ashbery's Farm Implements and Rutabagas in a Landscape, published in 1966, is an example of a sestina (http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/177258).  

The first of the undecoded messages read:  "Popeye sits in thunder,

Unthought of from that shoebox of an apartment,

From livid curtain's hue, a tangram emerges:  a country."

Meanwhile the Sea Hag was relaxing on a green couch:  "How pleasant

To spend one's vacation en la casa de Popeye," she scratched

Her cleft chin's solitary hair.  She remembered spinach."

And was going to ask Wimpy if he had bought any spinach

"My love," he intercepted, "the plains are decked out in thunder

Today and it shall be as you wish." He scratched 

The part of his head under his hat.  The apartment

Seemed to grow smaller.  "But what if no pleasant 

Inspiration plunge us now to the stars?  For this is my country."

Suddenly they remembered how it was cheaper in the country.

Wimpy was thoughtfully cutting open a number two can of spinach

When the door opened and Swee'pea crept in.  "How pleasant!"

But Swee'pea looked morose.  A note was pinned to his bib.  "Thunder

And tears are unveiling," it read.  "Henceforth shall Popeye's apartment

Be but remembered space, toxic but salubrious, whole or scratched."

Olive came hurtling through the window; it's geraniums

Scratched her long thigh.  "I have news!" she gasped.  "Popeye, as you know, forced to flee the

country

One musty gusty evening by schemes of his wizened duplicate father, jealous of 

the apartment

And all that it contains, myself and spinach

In particular, heaves bolts of loving thunder

At his own astonished becoming, rupturing the pleasant.

Arpeggio of our years. No more shall pleasant

Rays of the sun refresh your sense of growing old, nor the scratched

Tree trunks and mossy foliage, only immaculate darkness and thunder."

She grabbed Swee'pea.  "I'm taking the brat to the country."

"But you can't do that.  He hasn't even finished his spinach,"

Urged the Sea Hag looking fearfully around the apartment.

But Olive was already out of earshot.  Now the apartment

Succumbed to a strange new hush.  "Actually, it's quite pleasant

Here," thought the Sea Hag.  "If this is all we need fear from spinach

Then I don't mind so much. Perhaps we could invite Alice the Goon over" -- she scratched

One dug pensively -- "but Wimpy is such a country 

Bumpkin, always burping like that."  Minute at first, the thunder

Soon filled the apartment. It was domestic thunder

The colour of spinach. Popeye chuckled and scratched

His balls.  It sure was pleasant to spend a day in the country."

The Complaint of Lisa, by Algernon Charles Swinburne, is a double sestina (http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/174548).

http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/a_f/ashbery/images/popeye1.jpg

The Rules of Writing Poetry

"Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen." (Leonardo da Vinci)

You're ready to write your first poem.  What points should you keep in mind as you compose each line, each stanza?  Firstly, Kara Zeihl recommends that you set a goal for your poem (http://jerz.setonhill.edu/writing/creative1/poetry-writing-tips-how-to-write-a-poem/#1).  Is your purpose to describe an event or to protest an injustice or to tell a tale?  Robert Lee Brewer offers five examples that might inspire you to write a poem:  

• capture a moment
• steal a conversation
• describe something or someone
• respond to something
• use someone else's line

For more information, visit http://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/poetic-asides/advice/5-ways-how-to-write-a-poem.

Choose a theme for your poem.  Remember that a theme isn't just an idea, it's an idea plus an opinion. For example, the Vietnam War is an idea.  The senselessness of the Vietnam War is a theme.  

Kara Zeihl reminds you to avoid cliches, overused metaphors, similes or expressions.  Use images to stimulate the reader's senses.  Metaphors and similes are part of the poet's repertoire.  Use concrete rather than abstract words as much as possible.  The reader is more apt to have a sensory response to words that he or she can imagine like bird or sky or stream rather than peacefulness, happiness and serenity.  

Kara Zeihl suggests that you subvert the ordinary.  To subvert literally means to turn something upside down.  See everyday events in a new way.  Come at it from a different perspective.  "The best poems get written not by going in the front door of the subject, but round the back or down the chimney or through the window."

Tap into your own feelings.  Write about subjects that matter to you.  If it matters to you, you're likely to be more passionate about it.  Let that passion show in your writing.

Use everything in your toolbox, says Alison Feeney-Hart http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-29538180).  Remember the literary devices you learned about in school like personification and  alliteration?  Well, poetry has poetic devices:

• assonance ex. repeated vowel sounds in words near each other ex. "He's a bruisin' loser!"
• cacophony:  a series of harsh unpleasant sounds to convey disorder ex. "My stick fingers click with a snicker/And chuckling they knuckle the keys"
• repetition:  the re-use of words and phrases for effect ex. "Cannon to the right of them, Cannon to the left of them, Cannon in front of them, Volley'd and thunder'd"
• rhyme:  words that have different beginning sounds but endings that are alike ex. time, slime, chime (Note:  Remember rhymes should be natural, not forced.  Kara Ziehl suggests that you stick to free verse and save rhyming until you are a more experienced poet.  However, I enjoy the challenge of writing a poem that rhymes.)
• contrast:  closely arranged things with strikingly different characteristics ex. He was dark, sinister and cruel; she was radiant, pleasant and kind.
• oxymoron:  two words back to back which have opposite meanings ex. open secret, tragic comedy, foolish wisdom
• personification:  attributing human characteristics to an inanimate object ex. The days crept by slowly, sorrowfully.
• irony:  a contradictory statement to reveal a reality different to what appears to be true ex. Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven

For a more complete list, visit http://www.chaparralpoets.org/devices.pdf.

Ideas are great, but if you don't put aside the time to write, you'll never be a poet.  Find a regular time to write each day.  When I took my online poetry writing course, my daughter was very young.  I waited until she and my son were in bed at 9 pm before I started to write.  I would get in a solid two or three hours of writing.

Now it's time to grab a pen and paper and start composing the first line of your poem.

http://popcorntheblog.com/2012/05/03/emotional-outbursts-other-adventures-in-writing-poetry/