Sestina

So... I've written a sestina in the past. Actually, not only have I written a sestina in the past, I've done it with the help of The Making of a Poem in the past.

The first one I wrote was rather more successful than the second, I think, but significantly more difficult, both because I was unfamiliar with the form and because my tutor- yes, I did this for another class in the past, not for fun!- forced us to do it in iambic pentameter. Not amusing. It was definitely easier to start with the sixth stanza, all one word lines forming a sentence, and work backward from there, than to try and choose six words with no real sense of how they worked together. If I was ever to do it again, even if I didn't "cheat" with the six-word sixth stanza again, I think I'd try to assemble another collection of six words that were somehow related to each other even outside the context of the individual stanzas.

I was glad to have Seamus Heaney's "Two Lorries" recommended, as I didn't find any of the poems in the text particularly inspiring, having read them previously. I love the variation in the use of load/lode; it's interesting enough with, for example, the two/too/to variation, but to use a word that doesn't lend itself quite so easily to such wordplay is quite clever.

All that said... I find such restrictive forms very difficult not just because they essentially logic puzzles on one level, but because sound plays an enormous role in my experience and writing of poetry, and the repetition of end words really doesn't appeal to me.  I found myself struggling against my natural instincts to force my thoughts into the pattern.  Looking forward to the- relative- freedom of the ode next week!