How to Write a Sestina
By eHow Education Editor http://www.ehow.com/how_16712_write-sestina.html

A traditional poetic form created by Arnaut Daniel, the sestina is made up of six six-line stanzas and a final three-line envoi. Written in iambic pentameter, the sestina is unique in that the poet is required to end each line using a set pattern of the same six words.

Instructions

Things You’ll Need:
Dictionaries
Thesauri

Step 1:
Consider the subject matter that you wish to write about. Think about words related to your subject that you could use several times throughout your poem.

Step 2:
Write your first stanza (and those that follow) using iambic pentameter. The words that end each line in this stanza (identified as 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) will determine the words that end every stanza in your sestina.

Step 3:
Add a second stanza using those words in a 6, 1, 5, 2, 4, 3 order. If you do this correctly, the word used to end the first line of this stanza should be the same one you used in the sixth line of the previous stanza. The second should match the first, and so on.

Step 4:
Write a third stanza using a 3, 6, 4, 1, 2, 5 pattern, followed by a fourth stanza with a 5, 3, 2, 6, 1, 4 pattern. Stanza five should use a 4, 5, 1, 3, 6, 2 pattern, and stanza six should employ a 2, 4, 6, 5, 3, 1 pattern.

Step 5:
Draft a seventh stanza that is three lines in length, using all six ending words in the following places. Your ending words used in the second, fourth and sixth lines must be used halfway through the lines of this stanza. The fifth, third and first ending words of the first stanza are used to end the lines of this stanza, in that order.

Step 6:
Revise as needed.

My First Sestina
(I tried one another time and broke the rules because I'd failed to read them properly)

I would love to see others posted here for the exercise.
_______________________________________

Two people stood atop a distant hill.
I saw them as I left today from work,
as soon as I had shut the wooden gate
behind me and had chugged a drink of water.
There was no place I really had to go,
and so I took my time. I didn’t run

the way I sometimes do – I often run
as if life were a race. But on that hill
the silhouetted couple stood. I go
and come the same way every day from work,
taking for granted things like sun and water.
Familiar things get lost. Sometimes a gate

will make me pause and think; a creaking gate
especially so, and sounds of things that run,
like trickling brooks. There is a voice in water
that’s like an echo coming off a hill
where heavy clouds laid down their burdensome work,
and, like me, found their peace in letting go

of weight that binds. The moments come and go
as fast as rabbits rushing toward a gate
in search of freedom. There is always work
enough to keep us feeling on-the-run.
The move toward pleasure always seems up hill,
against the laws that govern running water.

And nothing is alive where there’s no water
that's troubled – living things must come and go.
Stagnation lies beneath a quiet hill
of graves, behind the locking of a gate
in wrought iron stillness. Living things must run.
An idle body has no line of work

to keep its spirit going. Life needs work –
and workers need a living well of water
to keep the heart from fainting as they run.
Recycling seems the only way to go.
Yes life’s a circle, and each of us a gate
that God has set upon his lovely hill.

I bike to work near waterfalls that run.
so brisk and full of life, go through the gate
and drink the sun-rise lilting on the hill.




[This message has been edited by Anne Bryant-Hamon (edited April 17, 2008).]

Here's my absolute favorite part.



[This message has been edited by Michael Cantor (edited April 17, 2008).]

Things You'll Need:
Dictionaries
Thesauri,
Trail Mix,
Thermal Underwear,
Nose Plugs.


*

(Anyone care to write the next six lines of the sestina?)

[This message has been edited by Roger Slater (edited April 17, 2008).]

Someone (Lewis Turco, perhaps?) correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't Sestina's traditionally syllabic as opposed to iambic pentameter? I mean, jeez, they're hard enough to write as it is without demanding that they also be strictly metered.

Lo

Here ya go, Anne, just to prove I can be a good sport when the mood overtakes me.

February, 1974


Sometimes there's nothing left to do but pack
your bags and leave. To stick around would be to court
disasterous results. Brown drugs in foil
packages lay scattered 'cross the floor. Go
elsewhere quickly now - don't wait. It's all your fault.
The stage was set by someone else whose cue


you should have recognized. This is your cue -
the baby's cry, the watching dogs that pack
around his crib, protectively, like it's your fault
their life is such a mess. He goes to court
today, he won't be home. It's time to go -
to grab the kid, the dogs, your clothes, and foil


his attempts to keep you locked inside. So, do it. Foil
him - don't lose your courage now. The broken pool cue
in the bedroom says it all. This man can kill. Go
far away and change your name. Don't bother packing
anything, just leave it all behind. The court
won't keep him jailed up tight for long. It's not their fault,


the case is weak. If anyone's at fault
it might be you. You've been the perfect foil
far too long. So scared, so meek and mild. You're courting
death if you don't leave. Take one more cue
from life before you die that needlessly. Just pack
your baby and your dogs and run away. Go -


Hurry - steal his keys and take his car. Go
find a place that's safe before you die. The fault's
your own. You should have left six months ago. Pack
the diaper bag with toys and doggie bones. The foil
packages and burnt spoons stay behind. The pool cue
in the corner that once kissed your empty head stays in his court.


You've got to move more quickly now. Don't court
disaster's clock. Grab your sanity and go.
You're very young, I know, and that's your cue.
You've got a life to live. It's his own fault
if someday he should overdose and foil
his last chance at staying clean. You pack.


You go. Take your child and your dogs. They'll take their cue
from you so please don't cry. Leave the foil to be dealt with by the court.
Pack this conviction with the bottles and the bones. It's not your fault.



[This message has been edited by Laura Heidy-Halberstein (edited April 17, 2008).]

Fascinating, Laura. It's unclear to me whether this is something you wrote in '74 or just now wrote. Either way, I do hope you had fun writing it.

I thought sestinas were supposed to be in IP - but I'm no expert.

If others want to do this exercise but would like to avoid the fretful, frightful, fraying fringes, feel free to send me yours in PM.

Anne

Actually, it wasn't fun at all.

Lo

Some people love writing sestinas. One particular poet comes to mind. I think they're a bit unnatural. But I wanted to try it. So that's why I started this thread. I usually don't have 39 lines to say about anything in a poem. It was always a stretch for me to write longer forms like that ballade and Chant Royal. For sure I will never write a novel :)

Take care -
Anne

Hi Anne,
This seemed like a fun drill so I thought I'd join in. It isn't my first sestina, but I think it's one of the only ones I didn't write while drunk in a bar or at a party. Thanks for posting this. Hope you had as much fun as I did.

I thought when you were gone my peace was made,
But now your empty pillow mocks my joy.
I picture you asleep, an earthly angel,
Who only lacks the wings to bring him home.
I would be willing to forgive all wrongs,
If only I could trust you to be kind.

The other day you smiled, you were so kind
I thought that with you back, our peace was made,
But then you blew me off, revived dead wrongs,
And resurrected sorrow to kill joy.
So now, though I am drawn, I can’t go home
To him who one time seemed to be an angel.

Perhaps, although unkind, you are an angel,
But I’d prefer a man, if he were kind.
For years you reassured me you’d come home,
But still you strayed. And what home can be made
Out of an empty house, built without joy
And with a cornerstone made up of wrongs?

Let us forgive the past, forget all wrongs.
Let us be true. I’ll guard you like an angel
Guards sleeping children, and fills their dreams with joy
So they may dream of peace. Let us be kind
And let us claim a future newly made
To stand forever as an earthly home.

But still you stay away. Forget the home,
Forget the dreams we had. Remember wrongs.
Remember in the solitude you made
That love is difficult. I’m not an angel
And I can’t save you, though I would be kind.
So let us stay alone and forget joy.

Why does your voice still fill me with such joy?
Why, when I hear it, do I feel at home?
Leave me alone, if you wish to be kind.
‘Cos running hot and cold adds to the wrongs.
But still, though you are cruel, you are my angel
And so I’ll say to you whose absence made

All of the joy we felt transform to wrongs.
But if I could go home and find my angel
Pretending to be kind, my peace were made.

Hi Barb -

Thanks for joining in. This one is filled with angst. Such sorrow often 'feels uncommon', but is common to us all.

My greatest peace came when I finally understood that no one could be a 'husband' to me except for Christ. I think I used to believe that one man could be "like God" and keep me company. No one can do that... because God has been diced up into bits and scattered over the earth! I hope you don't mind the personal commentary on the content of your poem.

I'm like Solomon who had many wives (except I have many husbands, i.e. people who are precious to me). I think my husband is a certain part buried inside of every man (person). Admittedly, sometimes that precious pearl is so covered with mud that I cannot find it! Gosh, I bet I sound like a werido! Oh well. Just felt like telling you these things.

I don't think I like the sestina as a poetry form all that much. I've never read one that I thought was an awesome piece of poetry. Perhaps there's one hidden somewhere that I just haven't laid my eyes on yet. But I have my doubts http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/ubbhtml/smile.gif To have 6 repeated words spread over 6 stanzas often comes off as sounding rather monotonous (IMO). This comment is toward sestinas in general, not yours specifically.

Grace and peace to you -
Anne

We talked about sestinas with Rhina on Mastery a good while ago. I posted this. Lo, I don't see why it's harder to use meter in a sestina than anywhere else.
This is written about women who were left without men because of wars. I knew many in my childhood. They became feminists and had careers and fun.
And nearly all sestinas are dull. I remember we found some which were anything but. This isn't anything special just an attempt to write one of the jolly things.

To Maiden Aunts


Too glib, to condescend to maiden aunts
who saw the world at war, as all at once
their world went mad and robbed them of their chance
to live their lives. No whisper or response
to make them feel like flowers. No romance
to sing their hearts into a fervent dance.

And if fate toyed with them, and at some dance
they met a boy who charmed them, maiden aunts
were far too frightened to believe romance
could promise them a future. Never once
did they entrust their youthful heart’s response
to love. It was too great a loss to chance.

They saw life as a brutal game of chance
where happiness was like a firefly’s dance,
elusive and capricious. Their response
was frozen. Thus the girls turned into aunts
before their beauty faded. All at once
they turned to books and study for romance.

The scholar aunts were teachers and romance
for them was knowledge. They gave girls the chance
to own their lives. They told them all how once
girls had no freedom, and their eyes would dance
when Eliot (George not Tom) spoke well of aunts
and Woolf (Virginia) wrote their response.

They saw their younger sisters’ vain response--
new furniture, designer clothes--romance
had trapped them in domestic dullness. Aunts
had independence. They each seized the chance
to travel. Correspondence traced their dance
through fabled cities, loving more than once.

They knew where history and drama once
enacted out a passionate response,
and on exotic tombs their spirits danced
to unfamiliar music. A romance
that echoed through the universe. A chance
to travel with the Bodhisattva aunts.

My favourite aunt once said that real romance
was more than a response to casual chance,
but rather freedom’s dance for captive aunts.

Theft

They left when no guard saw them go
And took with them the Diamond Heart.
This theft we all would later know
As why the Diamond War would start
When death removed the gorgeous glow
From bodies dumped inside the cart.

The bodies dumped inside the cart
Had nowhere else where they could go.
They lost the life that made them glow.
You cannot warm a stiffened heart.
Though no one thought this war would start,
It did, and now that's all we know.

It started, and that's all we know.
I see your head rest in the cart.
They stop, reload, and then they start.
I cannot go where you will go
At least until my weakened heart
Goes stiff and loses all its glow.

It's stiff and lost all of its glow.
The thieves escaped, but they don't know
What happened to the Diamond Heart
When you were placed inside the cart.
This one must stay, but some must go,
And further warfare needs to start.

As further warfare wants to start,
The Diamond Heart will cease to glow,
At least for those who have to go,
Who never more will need to know
The others lying in the cart
Are still just like the Diamond Heart.

They're still just like the Diamond Heart,
But did their beating ever start,
Or were they always in the cart,
And did some ever see them glow?
The thieves confuse all that we know,
Except we also have to go.

It is the heart that makes one glow,
But when we start, we soon will know
Into the cart, we all shall go.

Janet,

I find your poem fascinating as one who has been both delighted and perplexed about the role of being a female in this world. I'm continually intrigued and annoyed by human sexuality. It seems to be at the root of everything both good and bad!

Thanks for posting one! Not bad. :)
Anne

Frank -

Yours is interesting. The talk of theft and Diamond wars reminded me of Africa and the hellish problems going on there.

I'm wondering whether you and Barbara and Janet randomly chose 6 words and began writing, or if you thought about what you'd like to write about and then chose 6 words? The one I posted here was the result of choosing 6 words and just beginning to write, not knowing where it would take me.

Thanks for the fun :) It makes me happy when people come out to play poetry games with me.

***Smiles***
Anne

Dear Anne,

In reply to your earlier post, I agree that no one's love could replace God's, but it's hard to be rational about love sometimes... I can't say I ever expected a guy to be like God, but I did hope he might stick around. Ah well. I like the idea of a pearl covered with mud. Of course, it does rather remind one of the advice not to throw pearls to swine.

In answer to your question, as I wrote each line of the first stanza I thought about whether I could repeat the end word and I tried to choose ones that were easily repeated. 'Made', for that purpose, was probably a mistake.

Barbara

Barbara -

Interesting to know how you approached your sestina. You knew what you wanted to write about and in writing the first stanza chose the words. Perhaps I'd have more luck writing a sestina if I knew what I wanted to write about before-hand. As I said, I picked six words randomly and just dove in with no idea where I'd go...probably not the best approach for writing a sestina or any other form.

My apologies if my personal comments came across as sounding insensitive. They were not meant to be and what I was trying to say probably made little sense.

Should you decide you want to do a very challenging exercise, we could swap end words from the sestinas we've posted here and try to write another using each others six words. If you're not interested, I totally understand. But I think I will collect all of the end words from yours and Janet's and Frank's poem and try to write my own 3 sestinas with them just to make sure I don't like writing in the form. This will take me some time - I can't just spit one out in 30 minutes.

:)
Anne

Dear Anne-

No worries. I appreciated your comments a lot actually. And you're on for the exercise of swapping end words. Not sure when I'll get mine up, but should be before Tuesday anyhow.

Ciao,
Barbara

A poem that sends up the form beautifully is “Bob”:
http://www.pshares.org/issues/articl...ArticleID=4668

Also see this earlier Erato thread on “The Art of the Sestina”.
http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/ubbhtm...ML/000469.html

[This message has been edited by Henry Quince (edited April 20, 2008).]

I wanted to remove this sestina for something else.



[This message has been edited by Barbara Godwin (edited June 03, 2008).]

I started with the first stanza and then, painstakingly, tried to figure out which end-word had to go on which succeeding line. That ordering was the most difficult part of the challenge. I kept getting the permutations wrong. So the chosen words were whatever worked in the first stanza.

I did choose the end-words to be simple rhymes to add some repeated sound to the sestina, which I think it lacks. I also shortened the lines to tetrameter and repeated the 6th line in the 1st of the next stanza. All that is not in the original rule.

To me, the sestina is a mathematical pattern that has no sound (metrical/poetic) value associated with the permutation of the end words. And that makes me question whether the sestina is a true form rather than merely an arbitrary rule.

Meter in a language is more than the description of it, that is, more than the number of syllables, accents, alliterations, rhymes, or repetitions that are detected by those scanning the poem. It is something that is pleasing to the ear of many native listeners, which may turn out to be not easily scanned.

The sestina, however, starts with an arbitrary description rather than a pleasing pattern already in existence in the language. Adding the false assumption that the existence of a description implies the existence of a poetic form, one gets the false conclusion that the sestina is a poetic form. To my ear, the sestina, as a rule, is unlikely to succeed as a form in any language.

The rhymed example by Swinburne that Henry Quince mentioned in the thread he cited I thought was interesting, but even with that example, I don't see why the permutation of the end-words was necessary. The arbitrary rule got in the way even there. Nor do I see the benefit of adding this end-word permutation constraint to anything written in free or blank verse.

Thanks for the challenge, Anne. It was the only sestina I've ever written.




[This message has been edited by Frank Hubeny (edited April 20, 2008).]

Nice retelling of the Jack and Jill story, Barbara.

I agree, the retelling of something familiar to me made it more enjoyable. Way to go Barbara. I will be working on mine this week.

Frank, I tend to agree with your thoughts about the sestina. I think it is "a kind of poem" (if we don't want to include it in formal poetry) that can only rarely succeed as a very good poem that people would want to read again and again. That's how classics are made - you want to read them again and again.

Henry, I glanced at the first link and wondered what all the Bobbing was about. I'll have to check more into this stuff later - it is past my bed-time.

Thanks everybody!

Watch this space this week for my upcoming sestina, but don't set your hopes too high!

Anne

Thanks Frank and Anne. Jack and Jill were the first things that came to mind when I saw your end words. I don't know what I think about Sestinas either. They're a fun challenge to write, but I don't usually keep them afterwards.

Barbara

Hello, Barbara -

Sorry this was so long in coming. I had a sinus headache for most of the week, but still had to be at work. I find it difficult to write when I have a headache. Excuses, excuses, everyone has one!

And may I say, I don't much care for the result of this exercise for myself - meaning, I ain't crazy about the sestina I made with these end words, mostly because it sounds redundant (and perhaps corny, though I do believe what I'm saying in it). For time's sake, I'm going to leave the all caps since you don't mind them anyway - and also, I'm pretty sure I made a mistake in my 7th stanza, but am sick to death of the sestina so I am not going to fix it.
And now that the into is over... here she is:

From land and sea a melting pot was made
Of people stirred together of every kind
Of tongue and tribe and race without a home
To call their own. They sailed in search of joy
Or something not delivered by an angel –
For justice from a litany of wrongs.

Each one was dealt a smattering of wrongs
Men measured out on nations that were made
A wasteland. It’s quite rare that there’s an angel
With power on the earth, whose ways are kind
Where righteousness leads people into joy,
That earth might be for all a happy home.

But Jesus said this world was not his home,
His followers would suffer many wrongs.
They’d learn to look inside for lasting joy.
And for our growth this trial of time God made.
Though often God’s plan doesn’t feel so kind.
Yet He has promised each a guardian angel.

Though Jesus did not call upon his angel
To save him when he’d left his heavenly home.
He trusted that his Father’s plan was kind,
And that He would eventually right the wrongs
That come upon us all. For we were made
To bear the earthly image first. What joy

Shall fill us as we drink of heaven’s joy
And join the ecstasy known to the angels.
It was for joy that everything was made.
Our Father plans to bring us safely home,
To wash away all pain and tears and wrongs
We have endured. And we shall be a kind

Of heavenly being. Each seed begets its kind.
In Father’s house there is eternal joy,
For nothing vile can enter – and no wrongs
Shall ever hurt us there. We shall be angels
who sing forever in our heavenly home.
It was for love and joy that we were made.

For joy we have been made lower than angels,
But only in this temporal earthly home.
The wrongs we suffer shall teach us what is kind.

Sorry you had a headache. I like yours a lot better than mine. Barbara

...

[This message has been edited by Jan D. Hodge (edited May 09, 2008).]

Nice lines! http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/ubbhtml/smile.gif

Jan,

Are you talking to me?! http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/ubbhtml/smile.gif Kidding. Thanks for sharing this. I'm convinced for sure that I don't like writing sestinas. I much prefer letting others write them!

Hope you had a nice vacation. And thank you for sending the lovely poetry cards - they're beautiful, and that was so kind of you.

Okay, whose going to write the next sestina? For my part, I'm leaving that up to my double/twin.

Cheers!
Anne

Mark Strand solved the "problem" of the sestina by writing his in prose. See his "Chekhov: A Sestina" in <u>The Continuous Life</u>.

Thanks for the resource. I'll have to check that out.

Anne

The best ones are by Auden, don't You think? I've writen a few but only one I liked. Here it is:

Red-eye

My red-eyed laughing barber cared but little
What skulls he clipped, what chins & cheeks he shaved.
My mother packed me off when I was small,
Short back & sides she told him. He was pale,
His slightly smaller left red-eye was real,
He unscrewed the right right out when I was older,

When the asymmetry made him look that much older,
Then eased his pinkie moistened with a little
Vaseline over the unwinking glass, his real
Left eye, red-eye, observing. I, half-shaved,
My moony mirrored face as pocky pale
As a goat's cheese, I was watching too. Some small

(Probably venomous) insect buzzed & I thought how small,
How bright, how intricate as we grow older,
It shines, the old innocence beyond the pale.
We yearn back to the abandoned city, dinky little
Streets, warm intimate squares, well-shaved
Lawns & rank on rank of improbable flowers real

Life can never beat - what is as real
As your misremembered bliss at being small?
Why I used to watch my father while he shaved,
Asked could I strop the razor? When you're older.
But I won't want to do it then. You peel back little
Scabs off your knees & the skin there, it's all pale,

It's shiny, not like proper skin, it's pale,
It's dead like paper, shiny & unreal.
Most nights I wake round four to little
Sighs & squeaks & settlings. Being small
Just stops being an option when you're older,
When the family needs you showered & shat & shaved,

It's a man thing, see. My red-eyed barber shaved,
Talked, laughed & snipper-snippered. Moony, pale,
Behind thick drawn curtains something whispers: older,
Unwiser & twenty thousand times more real.
You've given away the job of being small
For ever, friend, but you have to laugh a little.

Red-eye, you laugh a little now you're shaved,
You carry your small guts round in a pail.
Nothing is real, you learn that when you're older.

John,
There are some gems in this. Would you have conjured up this one-eyed barber without the steeplechase of the sestina?
When the family needs you showered & shat & shaved
Love it.
Janet

Yeah, Janet. I'm glad you like it and, frankly, so do I. And, no, it wouldn't have come without the sestina form. The same is true, I'm sure, of the Auden one about the vats. He conjured it out of a bunch of six words. I think I mightlike to try the Swinburne test - write a rhymed sestina. I've always felt Swinburne is underrated. He took rhyme and metre to places no-one els did - except W.S. Gilbert, (another true poet and better than Swinburne). In my view the poets and the artists since then have far too often committed the Treason of the Clerks and sold out to the Powerful. You see them trotting along behind the fascists of the right and left, mostly left these days since Adolf was seen off so comprehensively AND NOT BY THEM. Perhaps I am ranting a bit but the forts are in enemy hands here and in the Antipodes. Dammit you have to go to the United States to find Eratosphere.

It was my old boss, not many inches from a crook, but a man I worked for for a dozen unforgettable years (unforgettable however hard I try heh heh), who gave me that shit showered and shaved thing - just waiting for a poem to put them in. He also had this little mantra before he left the house or the office of the country. Spectacles, testicles, wallet and watch, Not orignal, I'm sure, but what mastery of form! Three dactyls and a final thump.

Here's one that's rhymed and metrical, but awfully crowded - possibly too ponderous. I've never found a home for it.

Hexagram

“An eruv is a bounded space within which Jews who adhere to traditional religious law can "carry" objects in public spaces on the Sabbath...Its boundary is a real physical entity… walls, trees, telephone wires... lengths of twine.” (The Community Eruv)

Among the ultra-Orthodox, the eruv line
defines a circumscribed community; confined
by fences, walls, and twisted lengths of plastic twine.
Here, the certitudes of God, of man and mind,
swirl and spin about each other in a ring
of tightly argued logic; here, wise scholars string

out meditations on the nature of each string
that dangles from the tzitzit: kabalistic line
of calculations follows line until the ring
of elders chanting evening prayers will fail to find
its place or peace. And here, though none have undermined
the Sabbath laws, the laws themselves may now entwine

with logic that extends all boundaries; lets twine
assign what man designs. But Saturdays, the string
bikinis shining by the green-blue sea remind
observant boardwalk walkers that the eruv line
that runs along Miami Beach is less defined,
more serpentine; that here a woman’s diamond ring

may navigate her waist and hips, that cell phones ring
on Shabos, almost-naked joggers sweat white wine.
Among the skull caps, curls and caftans, unrefined
turistas slouch: Brazilians, Russians, gangsters. String-
thin, vaguely Asian models navigate their in-line
skates past beaver-hatted dandies; none pay mind

to women who, in sheitels and Versace, mind
long ranks of strollers. Further south, the nipple ring
personifies the Beach. The smoke, the toke, the line
of coke, the all-night clubs where genders intertwine
in every combination: now a gleaming string
of dancers roams the floor, and calls, and seeks to find

more partners – in the eruv! – purpose undefined,
but none here come here with Kabala on their mind.
Yet, the scene is like those paintings where a string
of pious sages levitates to form a ring
around the moon. Freed from their cage of bits of twine,
they soar as eagles, far above the earth-bound line.

Will mankind find a resurrected ancient ring,
where zealots, drunk on God and mind, can intertwine
inside the eruv? Or is it all a line of string?



[This message has been edited by Michael Cantor (edited May 01, 2008).]

Michael, that's real good. One of the few sestinas I've chosen to read in its entirety, and I enjoyed it. Perhaps it would find a home without the envoi, or with a rewrite of the envoi, which for me was a three line disappointment after 36 strong lines.

Roger - thanks for the encouragement. I agree completely about the envoi. It just clunks. I haven't looked at this one for a while - more or less gave up on it - and I will try a rewrite on the envoi. Or possibly use your other suggestion, and just snip it off. (Surely, in a poem like this, there's a place for a mohel.)

Looking more closely at the string see that Janet wrote a splendid rhymed sestina. I think, as she hints, that the problem is to prevent them getting ponderous and DULL. I don't think Mochael's is either of these things I love it.

Michael,
Yours is just wonderful! I had a rebellious Jewish friend who was driven insane by her relatives' orthodox practices. Pity she's not with us still. She'd have loved this one. I remember it from the last time you posted it.
Janet

John and Michael -

I enjoyed both of your sestina offerings. They are definitely not boring. Each of them demonstrates that sestinas can rise above the common-place theme and satiate the reader's desire for mental stimulation. So I won't completely dismiss the form from my life, but likely won't write any myself for a long, long, long time to come.

Thanks for sharing them with us.
Anne