So, sestinas are hard to write: the difficulty is finding sufficiently flexible end words to sustain interest over 39 lines, and that’s not to even get into the problem of incorporating the final tercet. Like any form, it lends itself well to particular kinds of use - Heaney’s ‘Two Lorries’ and Bishop’s elegant ‘Sestina’ are two which work well using narrative: Bishop’s using fairly straightforward nouns as end-words, both using a mix of end-stopped and run-on lines. The run-on lines prevent the form from becoming static; looking at two other examples – Swinburne’s ‘Sestina’ and Pound’s ‘Sestina: Alteforte,’ both of which employ substantially more end-stopping, in Pound's, it’s only the force of the content – violent, declarative – that gives the work any real momentum, and in Swinburne’s case – well, it’s a work about dream states, so too much momentum would probably be unseemly.
I thought I’d try writing one that embraces the potentially repetitious awfulness to which it can clearly descend: insomnia seemed a suitable subject, a sort of alter ego for the Swinburne, I suppose. But it’s hard to make a virtue of awfulness… It is indeed a rigorous exercise, though, if nothing else.
Additional reading this week: Rossetti’s ‘Goblin market’ (memory pricked by Dr Ni Dhuibne’s class), this Autumn’s Poetry Ireland Review, which includes a few new poems by Jane Yeh (British based American poet, gifted and humorous, a rare enough combination in a poet). Also took a look at some sestinas in McSweeney’s archive : this one is fun - http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/wtf-sestina
