How do we do the "box" of poetic form?

When everyone tells us to "get out!"

Photo by Ales Krivec on Unsplash

When I first heard of the poetic form called sestina, it sounded difficult and ancient. It’s a form we’ve inherited from 12th century, France.

And it’s shaped by “repetition.” Repetition can be clunky and deadening. Repeating words in fiction brings on questions of intention and carelessness. Not necessarily fair words! But…

Repetition can also become invocation, magical and contemplative. In the work of creating, repetition can be a study, an evolution. Might even be a source of humour.

I’ve also borrowed from this poetic form—heavily—and applied the framework to prose, to journal-writing, to thinking, and circling back to a resting place. If poetry isn’t your thing, read through this post anyway, and consider applying the principle to other works, or even to the brainstorming of a project: write half a dozen words associated with a project, and play! The longevity of the sestina—like any longevity—is about play. Play sustains.

Traditionally, sestina is the challenge of taking six words and rotating through six stanzas in a pre-determined ordering, followed by a closing three lines—an envoi. That’s the basic mechanics.

But the call of poetry is always what lies under the surface. Much as the haiku is an exploration of taking a corner and stumbling over surprise, the sestina is the contemplation of… something. And it too has corner and surprise, both emerging from the repetition.

Subject matter can be anything. What’s on your mind these days? Especially for those of us who struggle with letting go of ideas/thoughts/words, this form is a way to give a thought its due, or to spend time with an obsession. This form is both expansive and focused in its circling quality, this struggle, this almost obsession. By the time the sestina completes gestation and birth, there’s a palpable sense of release.

Choosing your six words

There’s more than one way to begin. You can choose your six words before. Write them out on paper, and let thoughts simmer. Start playing with a six-line stanza, one word in each line. Traditionally, the words are to come at the ends of the line.

If you can’t come up with six words, begin with several and start to work; find your way to the remaining words as you write.

However you pull those six words into your mind, let the first stanza do its organic thing and ‘become.’ You’ll then have your six, and can begin to order them in the traditional rotation. (See below.)

Traditionally, sestinas in English are not rhyming, and are in iambic pentameter or decasyllabic meters. (Ignore these words if you want… just read on.) You know to read aloud and over again to hear rhythm.

With such forms, you want to consider when flexibility works and when to stay with the “box” of whatever form you’ve chosen to work with. While we’ve been preached at (and we have—to the point of mindlessly) to think we’re best “out of the box,” poetic form is surely a good box! To locate our fence boundaries can give us much to work with. I wrote about this here:

January 2022 Newsletter

In and out of “Box”

Below, I’ll set out the sequence of words in the traditional sestina. This is where the challenging fun of the “box” is—in keeping with this sequencing.

However, in keeping with “play,” poets at times take the six words and shift them: the word “fast” might become “breakfast,” for instance. “After” might become “afternoon.” Play with homophones and homonyms (to/too/two, there/they’re/their, pray/prey, lead/lead, wind/wind, and more). If you can’t come up with a starting place, you might want to give yourself a set of such words (you can look up lists of homonyms) and begin there.

How far can you take such changes before you lose the core of repetition that is the form? Working with form can be an exercise in respect for tradition, what you want to add to the world and, always, the piece itself.

You might want to build meaning with your repetition. English is a rich language, we have words that are half- and quarter- shades of meaning apart. Which word drills closer to your meaning, and the place the poem is going? Or the place it’s pulling you? Your six words can evolve. This has been called “slant-sestina” by some.

Think in terms of taking hold of the best pieces of the form, and being flexible—replacing other elements.

Strict poetic form can be daunting and, as a result, bypassed. And this is a loss. The key piece is to decide where you want to set up the sides of your own box, what will be fruitfully challenging, and what will be going too far. As with crawling into any box, keep the top open!

You might begin by working with all of the elements and then, by trial and error—that dance of work and play—choose not only what’s working for you, but what’s working with the content and grain of your particular poem. The form of a piece of writing shapes the whole, so default to the box until you’ve played enough to discover something else. Hold off until you’ve finished a complete draft, I’d suggest. Then decide what isn’t working, what can work better. See how far you can play with the form. Note what can happen as you find your way through—

The Robet McKee quote: if you’re going to mess with a principle, replace it with something better.

The middle stanzas

The middle stanzas can feel as if they’re taking you down some side road. When you read a sestina, observe the shift that frequently occurs in the middle stanzas. The repetition itself is the push for the unexpected to take shape and move the whole. The thought that repetition is lacklustre disappears when we experience it as the driving creator; it is the gift of this form. Each form has its gift.

LET THIS SIDE ROAD HAPPEN!

This is the magic of the form: you have your trail of words to follow. You’re lining them up in a certain order. But after that, you don’t know where it’s taking you. Don’t expect to know. Stay open, follow the path that reveals itself.

Here’s a sestina by Stanley Miller Williams.

https://www.webpages.uidaho.edu/~markn/courses/315/pdf/sestina.pdf

The opening stanza sets up the circling repetitive nature in both meaning/content and form. The 6th stanza consists only of the words. (I wonder at what point he was aware that this would be how it would end up? Or was it a starting place, and he circled back to the beginning?)

So much to observe here. The shape on the page, the pacing, is significant.

Other examples—

Note the shift between stanzas 4 and 5 in this:

https://caladesishore.com/dpc/Poets/AnthonyHecht/BookofYolek.html

This is written in tercets, with enjambed lines at times:

https://poets.org/poem/chicken-hearted

(Enjambed: “The running-over of a sentence or phrase from one poetic line to the next, without terminal punctuation; the opposite of end-stopped.” —from Poetry Foundation)

This one’s a bit of fun—

https://poets.org/poem/farm-implements-and-rutabagas-landscape

Words in order

After your first stanza 1,2,3,4,5,6 or ABCDEF, for the following five stanzas, jot down the words in order as below before you begin to write stanzas 2-7.

Stanza 2: FAEBDC (6,1,5,2,4,3)

Stanza 3: CFDABE (3,6,4,1,2,5 and so on…)

Stanza 4: ECBFAD

Stanza 5: DEACFB

Stanza 6: BDFECA

And in the envoi, those last three lines, using one word in the middle of the line and one at the end, the order is: BE/DC/FA.

~~~

Re-cap - elements with options

Six words - stay with these, or stay with the meaning, but use quick phrases, synonyms or homonyms - consider how many times you might want to “stray,” what it adds—if anything—or does it muddy too much. In spite of the awkwardness that repetition can become, are you losing exactly that? The form’s supple centre?

Six stanzas plus envoi - but can be written in tercets or some breakdown of six or… ?

Not rhyming - but you can if you want

The ordering of the words for stanzas 2-6 is significant. Key, really - to mess with this is to mess with the form itself.

Let the middle stanzas go. As you work, you might feel like you’re losing control; it should feel that way. Follow…

Sestina is about play

Do post your work—would love to see.

**Please note: see Sheldon’s posting of his sestina in the comments, and follow his example of placing some form of space-holder between stanzas. Alas, there is no other way to indicate a stanza break! Substack is not quite ready for the sharing of poetry :)

Or share any thoughts—