Major Poetry Announcement: Sestinas Stink

Stop Writing Them or Assigning This Torture to Students

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When you love poetry, both as a reader and writer, a great thrill is learning the many forms the art may take: the sonnet, a crown of sonnets, villanelles, rhyme royal, blank verse, pantoums, and on and on. We tend to accept these uncritically, focusing much more on the quality, force, or impact of the individual poem rather than the form it assumes—This is a great sonnet! or This sonnet isn’t very good.

I would like to propose something different: an entire form can suck, no matter who the writer. Thus, I give you… the sestina.

Diagram of How to Write a Sestina

I hereby declare the entire sestina form, and all sestinas ever written (except one, more on this later), to be terrible. Elizabeth Bishop—one of my favorite poets and, in my mind, the last great modernist (more controversy!), wrote a sestina called “Sestina.” I hereby declare it terrible. Not because of Elizabeth Bishop, but because it’s a sestina.

I link to Bishop’s poem because it helps define the sestina for those unfamiliar with this extremely tedious, obstacle course of a form—in short, sestinas tell a story using six featured words, repeated in alternating fashion at the ends of lines in each stanza… for what seems like eternity. In fact, you must have at least taken pre-calculus just to get the word order right. You have these six, six-line stanzas (we’re on our way to satanism!), all culminating in the 3-line “envoi” stanza (how fancy), where the end words appear two to a line. This is why sestinas suck—they’re so much about the gymnastics, order, and mechanics that no one ever stopped to ask, “When is a form too much form?” Answer: the sestina.

I have written sestinas. I hereby declare that, as of today, all my sestinas suck. Oh, I was tricky and smart. I once wrote one where an end word was “son,” not just because with the lamest sleight of hand you could use it later as “sun” (homophone in the house!), but I even took the end phrase “our son” and turned it into “arson.” How do you like that! Of course, such gimmicks became the only way I could get through writing a sestina, and once that is the case then a form is not sustaining itself.

Why else do sestinas suck?

• They’re high in verbal cholesterol and carbs

• The wordiness, once in your blood, can clog your creative arteries

• Have you ever pulled through the McDonald’s Drive-Thru and seen that automatic drink-making machine? The one that rotates cups in a circle, drops ice, and adds carbonation and syrup without a human in sight? That’s a sestina.

• They make sleep apnea worse

• The cause early-onset boredom

I know, you’re already saying, “but what about so and so’s sestina?! It’s amazing. It taps into our deeper sense of….” Sorry, I fell asleep in the middle of typing that sentence, just like I fall asleep in the middle of every sestina I read. So let’s just get our unpleasant, canonical truth out of the way:

• Elizabeth Bishop’s “Sestina” and “A Miracle for Breakfast.” Beneath her talent.

• W.H. Auden’s “Paysage Moralise.” Garbage.

• Ezra Pound’s “Sestina Altaforte.” Whatever.

• John Ashbery’s “Farm Implement and Rutabagas in a Landscape.” Yawn.

• Swinburne’s “Sestina.” Gag me with a sestina.

• Sir Philip Sidney’s “Ye Goat-herd Gods.” Hereby demoted to “Mr.” Sidney.

• Petrarch’s sestinas. Get out of here with those.

• Marilyn Hacker’s “Forage Sestina.” Forage somewhere else.

These are all great poets who have written great poems. I love them. But the sestina is both the Scylla and Charybdis of poetic forms—there is nothing but doom. Just like the butterfly stroke is the fake stroke of swimming, the sestina is the fake form of poetry. These bad metaphors are better than sestinas.

But there is one exception, and only one: the sestina-defying miracle that is Miller Williams’ “The Shrinking Lonesome Sestina.” Why? Because there is one stanza that hints at what makes the sestina truly workable—a sestina where each line is merely one word (with the pompous “envoi” of course requiring two words per line). This formula, if fully unlocked, would be the Da Vinci Code of forms (another bad comparison better than sestinas). Here is Williams’ poem in full, and you will see what I mean about the stanza in question—it will break your heart and simultaneously put you in a headlock. (Note: Miller William’s is the father of Lucinda Williams, so talent runs in the family. None of Lucinda Williams’ songs, thankfully, are sestinas.)

The Shrinking Lonesome Sestina
        by Miller Williams

Somewhere in everyone's head something points toward home,
a dashboard's floating compass, turning all the time
to keep from turning. It doesn't matter how we come
to be wherever we are, someplace where nothing goes
the way it went once, where nothing holds fast
to where it belongs, or what you've risen or fallen to.

What the bubble always points to,
whether we notice it or not, is home.
It may be true that if you move fast
everything fades away, that given time
and noise enough, every memory goes
into the blackness, and if new ones come-

small, mole-like memories that come
to live in the furry dark-they, too,
curl up and die. But Carol goes
to high school now. John works at home
what days he can to spend some time
with Sue and the kids. He drives too fast.

Ellen won't eat her breakfast.
Your sister was going to come
but didn't have the time.
Some mornings at one or two
or three I want you home
a lot, but then it goes.

It all goes.
Hold on fast
to thoughts of home
when they come.
They're going to
less with time.

Time
goes
too
fast.
Come
home.

Forgive me that. One time it wasn't fast.
A myth goes that when the years come
then you will, too. Me, I'll still be home.

ARE YOU KIDDING ME WITH THAT SIXTH STANZA! In fact, that should be the whole poem and simply cut the rest. I, even while taking on this vitally important crusade, admit that not only is this the best sestina ever written, but that it’s such a good poem it renders the shackles of the sestina form irrelevant. Hats off to you, Miller Williams!

Williams, in a hat

So, given the obvious truths written above, we all must commit to the following:

• Not writing sestinas

• Not explaining the sestina form to people as if it’s more important than the poem itself

• If we are teachers, stop the torture of assigning students to write sestinas (See above diagram)

By doing this we, together, can make poetry great again.

The only exception would be the genius who cracks the Rosetta Da Vinci Stone Code and pulls off something like this.

Sestinas End (a draft of their demise)
        by Chuck Rybak

Keep
close 
our
days,
these
breaths.

Breath
keeps
this
close
day
ours.

Hours
breathing,
days.
Keep 
close.
This,

this,
our
closest
breath, 
keeps
days.

Days:
they
keep
our
breath
closed.

Closed
day.
Breathe.
These
Hours
Keep.

Keep close
our day,
this breath.

Challenge issued! Join me in the one-word-per-line-to-end-the-tyranny-of-sestinas-challenge. Our poetry depends on it.