Metric poetry is a straight jacket for the conventional, I tolerate sonnets out of respect for the poets that write them, but free verse is my chosen mode of expression. Love The Fish by Bishop and other beast pieces like The Jaguar by Ted Hughes
I knew I liked you, Chuck! I'm not a fan of sestinas either, although I do admire some poets who pull them off pretty well. But I won't write them anymore, and often will skip past reading them, same with the villanelles
I personally am quite fond of sestinas, though I agree that teachers should not be forcing students to write them. While they are a complex form, they can lend beauty and balance to your message, and allow you to build upon it flowingly. As a young writer of poetry, I think that sestinas encourage patience and creativity- though I agree that the word order for each line can get mildly complex and overstressed.
There's definitely something to learning via constraint (or form), which is really important to me. I think, personally, I'm in a place where I wish people would create their own constraints/forms based on the content. But I hear you.
I love sestinas in a way that may prove your point. It is poetry writing by way of sudoku puzzle, which usually makes them more satisfying to write than to read, at least to me. If I were a teacher, it's not a form I would assign to students, but it is one of my favourite writing exercises. So while I admire your attempt to slay this monstrous form, I fear I will continue feeding it :)
The Miller Williams poem is the first transcendent sestina I've ever seen. The spiraling, repeating nature of the hero words is well-suited to writing about memory.
Thanks. I've always been inordinately pleased with this little poem: a minor ditty that provides major delight (for its author, at least). I like your name better. The challenge of only using first names for future forms concerns me; we shall see. Sorry the formatting didn't work out. I guess Substack and the cut-and-paste function aren't on speaking terms.
Hear, hear! A fabulous post and one that I endorse 600%. The Miller Williams poem is a freakin' marvel! Thank you for introducing me to it. Wow. It really does render all other sestinas obsolete and beside the point: Yeah, you tried guys and gals, but Mr. Williams crushed you and your repetitive wankmanship. Sorry.
Your single word sestina challenge is also an intriguing counterpunch strategy. I'll see what I can come up with. But until then, let me share with you and your readers my "solution" to the sestina (which I've failed to master at least once, maybe twice). I call it the 50% Sestina: Half the rhymes! Half the stanzas! In two different ways! And 1/3 of an envoi! I'm not sure this low-calorie version is worth repeating, but it was fun to try and sure was a lot stressful to write than its overweight siblings.
[Big Title Goes Here]
In this country, inflated by its lust for everything big—
big dreams, big cars, big hair, big Ham-
mond organs wailing like the cat-and-dog-sandwich
crescendo of a big soundtrack—in this country . . . a sandwich
is a meal that could feed a dozen and always comes with a big
side of fries smothered in cheese and guacamole that ham-
mer our arteries into submission. Even our ham-
sters are big, blustery beasts swaggering across the beach kicking sand (which
in this country is the size of boulders) into the vacationing Big-
foot’s picnic basket, ruining his big ham sandwich. His huge tears overwhelm the ocean.
Nothing new under the sun, as someone says somewhere in the Bible. According to Sarah Hart, author of "Once Upon a Prime: The Wondrous Connections Between Mathematics and Literature" (a most delightful book, by the way: you'd probably love it), the form I "invented" is called a "tritina" and has been discovered and employed previously; Hart provides a published example. The tritina is one of a set of "sestina-like poem(s) with numbers other than six" which have been "named queninas by the Oulipo, in honor of Raymond Queneau" (page 31--and this should delight you as I know you're a fan of the Oulipo). While I am somewhat saddened not to be the one responsible for introducing the tritina to the world, I have to say that my take on this form is much superior to the example Hart provided. No brag, just fact.
Metric poetry is a straight jacket for the conventional, I tolerate sonnets out of respect for the poets that write them, but free verse is my chosen mode of expression. Love The Fish by Bishop and other beast pieces like The Jaguar by Ted Hughes
I knew I liked you, Chuck! I'm not a fan of sestinas either, although I do admire some poets who pull them off pretty well. But I won't write them anymore, and often will skip past reading them, same with the villanelles
I was thinking about you trying to illustrate. Sestina--“Here’s your next 6 months of repetitive work!”
That would be miserable.
I personally am quite fond of sestinas, though I agree that teachers should not be forcing students to write them. While they are a complex form, they can lend beauty and balance to your message, and allow you to build upon it flowingly. As a young writer of poetry, I think that sestinas encourage patience and creativity- though I agree that the word order for each line can get mildly complex and overstressed.
There's definitely something to learning via constraint (or form), which is really important to me. I think, personally, I'm in a place where I wish people would create their own constraints/forms based on the content. But I hear you.
Bravo. I have always suspected as much. I’m not too fond of villanelles either to be honest.
I definitely got tired of villanelles. If you're even a somewhat practiced reader, you know what's coming right away and it feels really mechanical.
The Fish is a great poem--have always loved that one.
I love sestinas in a way that may prove your point. It is poetry writing by way of sudoku puzzle, which usually makes them more satisfying to write than to read, at least to me. If I were a teacher, it's not a form I would assign to students, but it is one of my favourite writing exercises. So while I admire your attempt to slay this monstrous form, I fear I will continue feeding it :)
The Miller Williams poem is the first transcendent sestina I've ever seen. The spiraling, repeating nature of the hero words is well-suited to writing about memory.
Thanks. I've always been inordinately pleased with this little poem: a minor ditty that provides major delight (for its author, at least). I like your name better. The challenge of only using first names for future forms concerns me; we shall see. Sorry the formatting didn't work out. I guess Substack and the cut-and-paste function aren't on speaking terms.
Hear, hear! A fabulous post and one that I endorse 600%. The Miller Williams poem is a freakin' marvel! Thank you for introducing me to it. Wow. It really does render all other sestinas obsolete and beside the point: Yeah, you tried guys and gals, but Mr. Williams crushed you and your repetitive wankmanship. Sorry.
Your single word sestina challenge is also an intriguing counterpunch strategy. I'll see what I can come up with. But until then, let me share with you and your readers my "solution" to the sestina (which I've failed to master at least once, maybe twice). I call it the 50% Sestina: Half the rhymes! Half the stanzas! In two different ways! And 1/3 of an envoi! I'm not sure this low-calorie version is worth repeating, but it was fun to try and sure was a lot stressful to write than its overweight siblings.
[Big Title Goes Here]
In this country, inflated by its lust for everything big—
big dreams, big cars, big hair, big Ham-
mond organs wailing like the cat-and-dog-sandwich
crescendo of a big soundtrack—in this country . . . a sandwich
is a meal that could feed a dozen and always comes with a big
side of fries smothered in cheese and guacamole that ham-
mer our arteries into submission. Even our ham-
sters are big, blustery beasts swaggering across the beach kicking sand (which
in this country is the size of boulders) into the vacationing Big-
foot’s picnic basket, ruining his big ham sandwich. His huge tears overwhelm the ocean.
I love this so much! I think you just invented "The Tina." Now all of the new forms you invent have to take the form of first names.
Nothing new under the sun, as someone says somewhere in the Bible. According to Sarah Hart, author of "Once Upon a Prime: The Wondrous Connections Between Mathematics and Literature" (a most delightful book, by the way: you'd probably love it), the form I "invented" is called a "tritina" and has been discovered and employed previously; Hart provides a published example. The tritina is one of a set of "sestina-like poem(s) with numbers other than six" which have been "named queninas by the Oulipo, in honor of Raymond Queneau" (page 31--and this should delight you as I know you're a fan of the Oulipo). While I am somewhat saddened not to be the one responsible for introducing the tritina to the world, I have to say that my take on this form is much superior to the example Hart provided. No brag, just fact.
Oops. Should have used the Reply function for that last Comment.