Fame and the Lonesome Sestina
by Jules Nyquist
please reference the handout listed as a separate article on this website page.
INTRO SLIDE - TITLE PAGE
In advertising, it's said that people don't notice or remember something until they've heard or seen it six times. Today in poetry, the sestina seldom steals the stage, but it's a form that has a history of being noticed. The sestina form invites us to play with poetry as we abide by its rules. We can discover the grace and magic -- in my opinion -- unequaled by any other form. The sestina can be serious, but it can also have a sense of humor and be ridiculous. What is "The Whole Truth" about sestinas? I am just beginning to discover its many pleasures, and its frustrations.
SLIDE 2 - MASTER TROUBADOURS
Arnaut Daniel, who you see pictured above, was a 12th Century Italian poet and mathematician credited with inventing the sestina form. We will find out exactly what the sestina form of poetry looks like in a moment, but first, it's important to know that Daniel was part of a group called "troubadours" -- performing poets traveling from town to town for their fame and fortune, to shock, delight and entertain their audiences. Kind of like slam poets today. Troubadours were famous, much like movie stars or rock stars. I think David Bowie's song "Fame" is an appropriate theme song for the sestina.
The word sestina is from the Italian sesto or sixth. Troubadour is extracted from the French verb trobor - meaning "to invent or compose verse.
SLIDE - THE SESTINA PATTERN
A sestina can be daunting and a bit complicated. But it does follow a fairly simple pattern.
The sestina is divided into six sestets (six line stanzas) and one triplet called an envoi, all of which are unrhymed. However, each teletuon (or end word) technically rhymes with itself.
Six words occur as end words in each line, and repeat themselves in a set order in each stanza. There is a fixed distance for the repetitions: the last word of the end line of one stanza is repeated as the last word of the first line of the next stanza. .
You can see onscreen the pattern for the repeating words: six end words numbered 1 through 6, with 6 stanzas and an envoi. The numbers are listed in a line, but you can think of it as each end word in a stanza being assigned a number 1 - 6.
The envoi must use all six words, gathering them up together for a sort of "grand finale."
A sestina has 39 lines, so it is a long poem. The length of the lines can be short or long, but usually follows an iambic pan -TAM-ater pantameter pattern. Length is usually consistent in a single poem (but not always) as our first example will show us.
SLIDE - TELEUTONS IN MILLER WILLIAMS' SHRINKING LONESOME SESTINA
Let's take a look at a sestina by contemporary poet Miller Williams. This poem is in your handout and will be shown onscreen shortly. Williams is probably most well-known through his daughter, singer-songwriter Lucinda Williams. In "The Shrinking Lonesome Sestina" he gives us a hint in the title that there will be shortening line lengths. When line lengths are varied and played with, they can also reflect the mood of the poem.
The end words Williams' uses in his sestina are as follows:
home, time, come, goes, fast and breakfast, and to - too - two
They can be use interchangeably: breakfast and fast and to/too/two are also used interchangeably. It's good to pick words that have variations, or that can be used as a noun and a verb. This gives you more options as a poet when writing a sestina.
I've also numbered the words: 1 – 6
This is the pattern assigned to the words. As I read the poem you will be able to see the end words and how they are repeated following the sestina pattern in the poem.
SLIDE - SHRINKING LONESOME SESTINA
The end words are highlighted in red so you can follow along onscreen as I read the poem. I've also numbered the end words so you can see the pattern.
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 quick years come
then you will, too. Me, I'll still be home.
Here we can see how Williams' line lengths go from long to progressively short, which also shows us the shortening of his memories, which adds to the impact of the poem
He also has more than one thing going on with the lines, which adds more depth to the poem. You can see that the six teleutons also have a meaning all their own, separate from the poem, but part of the poem. "Time goes too fast. Come home." This is an entire stanza in itself, but also works well throughout the entire poem. It could be a hidden meaning, found by those alert at the beginning to catch the sequence of the words. By the end, one can re-read the poem for a deeper meaning, knowing what the hidden message is.
SLIDE - THE FIRST SESTINA
I'd like to bring us back to Daniel for a moment to reflect a bit on the history of the sestina. Back in the 12th Century, troubadours sang: their poems were usually accompanied by music, and they were known for performing in the courts of royalty. The competed with another to produce the wittiest, most elaborate, most difficult styles of poems and they were very influential on the European poetry circuit of the next few centuries. They traveled throughout the Provence area of France, eastern Spain and northern Italy.
The sestina was, and still is, a form for a master troubadour. Troubadours would perform various forms of poetry: the sonnet, the villanelle - but the sestina was a form for a master troubadour. One of the most powerful forces of the sestina is its repetition of sounds. A formalist poet may think of the sestina as lyrical, but when hearing it, the sound is what holds it together. Troubadours played with that musical quality of sound and repetition.
Personally, I'm usually first drawn to a poem by how it sounds. Poetry started out as an oral tradition and the sound and meter of a good sestina continues this tradition. It's interesting to note how poetry can change when it goes from being spoken to being on the page. That is why I read you Miller Williams' sestina, so you can hear the repetition of words and sounds for yourself.
So, you may be wondering, what was Arnaut Daniel's first recorded sestina about? The title, in English, translated from the IT Italian, loosely means: "The firm will that enters my heart."
Daniel chose his six end words as: : soul, chamber, nail, uncle, rod and enter. It was about flirtation and desire, a love song. It might have been a popular hit in its day, performed by the troubadours.. The Italian word for rod, is verga, Verga also means virgin. This adds to the poem yet another layer. In your handout there is the full version of Daniel's first recorded sestina translated from the Italian.
A master troubadour will make a sestina look easy. It will build upon itself. You can think if it as "not stepping into the same stanza twice." It is called "mirroring" when the end words or teleutons of one stanza change in form onto the next stanza. This mirroring fascinated the medieval poets. The medieval mind associated the number 6 as a weak number, and the number 7 as a whole number. The fact that each stanza is composed of three couplets, and there are six stanzas plus an envoi to equal 7 - it brings the poem back to its originating sequence, to close the circle perfectly. .
SLIDE - PERSONAL EPIPHANIES FOR JULES
How did I become obsessed with sestinas, you may ask? One discovery was the book by James Cummins and David Lehman "Jim and Dave Defeat the Masked Man".
"Masked Man" has a 'comic book' quality of storytelling that made sestinas fun.
The book "The Whole Truth" is one long epic poem, composed of 24 sestinas in sequence with a plot line like a mystery novel. I think this is amazing since this is Cummins' first published book of poems.
I had the pleasure of interviewing Jim Cummins by phone for my lecture research and I am indebited to him for sharing his thoughts with me. He also provided me with his sestina essay published in the Antioch Review. Cummins' says that you can go over the rules all you like, to try to master the sestina form. Mastering, however, is not how one goes about writing a sestina.
What poets think of the sestina is almost as obsessive as the form itself.
Personally, I am drawn to this form because of its obsessive, repetitive qualities. As I did more research however, I found there was an obsession about "obsession." If you think that as a poet, you have control of this form, you are mistaken. I have written a few sestinas in my lifetime, with only one or two that I consider printable. At the very least, you will come up with words going together that you did not think of before, that may work in another poem. I did not include any sestinas in my manuscript, even though I wanted a sestina in there to represent the form, but mine just weren't good enough or they didn't fit in with the feel of the entire manuscript. The sestina is a form that keeps you humble, it helps to have a sense of humor, too! .
SLIDE - QUOTES BY JAMES CUMMINS ON THE SESTINA
Sestinas can mock you. It is partly about the meter, the sound, the word repetition, but it's also much more about how the poet handles the form itself to make it interesting, to use the form to its best advantage. James Cummins says: "The sestina has everything to do with whether or not you can get said what you thought you wanted to say, as you find out what it is you can say."
He also says "a hundred sestinas must die, so that one may live." which I personally relate to.
Cummins says writing in the sestina form is "humiliating." He has a wonderful sense of humor about the writing process and as a result his sestinas have a playful quality about them.
He says "The sestina resists your choosing it as the appropriate vehicle for your material; it laughs at the whole process that puts composing words in a box. Because the sestina doesn't fit these ideas, people who need the notion of "mastery" find the sestina odd and confusing."
It's an embarrassment to formalists.
SLIDE - TELEUTONS IN THE WHOLE TRUTH
Let's look at a sestina by Jim Cummins. Here we see the end words chosen for Chapter 1 of the Whole Truth, the opening sestina for the book.
You can see that the choice of words will influence the feeling and subject matter of your poem. One thing I like about Jim Cummins' writing is his sense of humor. This opened up the sestina form for me as a vehicle for storytelling and the more narrative side of the sestina. In Jim Cummins' book, "The Whole Truth." he chooses some unconventional words for his opening poem. Use your imagination to see what this poem might be about!
§ Meat/meet - good choice, many uses
§ Masturbating/master at baiting - how many poems do you know that use this word?
§ Heiress/harass/airless - good, interesting variations
§ Swizzle/sizzle/whistles/weasel/
§ Armed/arm
§ Money
See how the poet can use variations of the words and they still 'count' as repeating the same word.
It also produces groupings of words that would never meet if it weren't for the rigid form. Cummins does this beautifully and we will now take a look at the first stanza of his opening sestina.
SLIDE - FIRST STANZA FROM THE WHOLE TRUTH CHAPTER 1
.
.
The case seemed cut and dried. Big Ed Fustner, the meat
King, had been caught in an after-hours dive masturbating
Ann Lowenfeld, a socially prominent bowling ball heiress,
with his ‘trademark’ – a rubber wiener – when a swizzle
stick turned up in the back of Maurice X., the one-armed
bathroom attendant who owed Fuster some gambling money.
Cummins uses the words as a master troubadour, entertaining us, getting us involved in a strong opening, just like a mystery novel. A poem must catch our attention immediately to hook us in, and this sestina does just that.
He goes on like this for 24 sestinas, each one a chapter in the story. Each sestina has a different set of end words.
SLIDE - WHAT THE CRITICS SAY
. There is a divided camp among poets as to those who write in form and those who don't:
Richard Wilbur says:
"Disgusting idea that someone should sit down with a determination to write in some form or other before he conceives of what the hell he's going to say."
Charles Bukowski says
"As inspiration wanes, form appears."
I write in form and in free verse, but I will always advocate writing in form. I think that experimenting in form makes you a better poet.
SLIDE - A CLOSED FORM FOR A POWERFUL VOICE (HONOR MOORE)
One of my absolute favorite sestinas is by the poet Honor Moore. My strongest argument about trying form is to push yourself into writing about a subject that you want to take a stand on. It may be fear, shame, embarrassment or something controversial. Honor Moore does that beautifully in her poem First Time: 1950.
The use of the sestina form provides focus, while still letting the individual voice come through.
Honor Moore says says she was "seduced" by the sestina. She says: "The incantatory dramatics of the recurring end-words haunted and challenged me." Her sestina, "First Time: 1950" is one of my favorites because it is so raw and haunting. The sestina form intensifies the subject matter of abuse, hitting the same six words over and over, making a powerful statement. Let's take a brief look at the teleutons used in her poem.
SLIDE - MOORE's POEM
Moore chose her six words to reflect a child's point of view, a five year old girl:
pull, black, slit, belt, hand, baby. Baby is also used as babysitter,
The poem is in your handout and I'm not going to read it here due to lack of time, but it is about a little girl being abused by the trusted family babysitter, while her little brother plays with the babysitter's keys. The word slit is used as the slit in the male babysitter's pants, the slit of his penis forcing its way into her mouth. It's effective because Moore keeps this child-like language throughout the poem, yet is very clear in what she is saying.
As we move through the last two stanzas we can see that the strict form of the sestina is a grand example of using form to concentrate and reign in an obsessive, repetitive subject such as abuse. The form becomes a bridge to release. The reader is forced to deal with the words again and again. The language is what stands out in this poem: a child's voice repeating the six simple, ordinary, yet effective words. I can't imagine this poem in free verse, it is so much more effective as a sestina.
SLIDE - EXTREME ORDER IN TIMES OF UNCERTAINITY
Maybe sestinas can force us to be more creative in our poetry, and get away from the lifeless and abstract that fills a lot of contemporary literary journals. I quote Dana Gioia
A madwoman screaming on a street corner has emotions enough for an epic, but she lacks the form to express her interior life clearly to anyone else. I believe that emotion is most keenly felt when it is partially held in check.
-- Dana Gioia
Sometimes extreme order is what has drawn contemporary writers to the sestina because we live in a state of confusion, fear or alarm. In our current political situation in the U.S. , where the government is regulating more of our private lives, formal poetry, including sestinas, may become more popular with poets as a way of expressing heightened political tension. Sestinas are one way poets can focus, to reinforce structure and create a sense of order, resolution and stability.
SLIDE - STAR BLACK ON WEAVING A SESTINA
One variation on a sestina is a double sestina, which has 12 stanzas instead of six. I'd like to play an excerpt of an interview I recorded with Star Black, poet, photographer, and here with us this term as a Bennington instructor. She came across the double sestina by accident and wrote only that type of poetry for about four years, as an obsession, and then stopped writing them. Star refers to a double sestina called 'House Call' from her book of double sestinas, "Double Time." This is in your handout. Please refer to this to see the pattern she talks about.
PLAY CD - STAR BLACK - time 3:58
refers to entering a meditative state, write the first stanza with no restraint then write into a form
process of meditative weaving
SHOW SLIDE OF WEAVE PATTERN, THEN BACK TO ORIGINAL
out each time to line 6, backeach time to line 12
stanzas themselves are patterns, out and in like waves, two things going on
argyle- woven into the poems, the process
Japanese scroll, the scroll of the computer.
BACK TO WAVE STANZA SLIDE
Star Black was talking about how she wove her lines into wave patterns.
Line length can also vary from long to short. Beautiful!
SLIDE - VARIATIONS ON A SESTINA LINE LENGTH WITH MILLER WILLIAMS
There are many variations on the sestina form. In the opening poem from Miller Williams' The Shrinking Lonesome Sestina, we saw how he effectively varies line length in a sestina. As Star says, it's good to have more than one thing going on. In this case it's line length variations and the teleutons or end words themselves, making a complete sentence to reveal a hidden meaning in the poem.
SLIDE - DIALOGUE AS TELEUTONS
Teleutons don't have to be single words. Ordinary speech tends to repeat certain words and a sestina can also use multiple word dialogue for teleutons.
For example, in a sestina written by David Lehman in the book "The Masked Man," he uses the phrases
"Give him the gun,"
"Drop it,"
"What's that sound?" and "What sound?" written as dialogue and as end words. Here we see an excerpt from stanzas two and three.
SLIDE - NAMES OF POETS AS TELEUTONS
David Lehman uses the names of six poets as his six words in the sestina called
"Sestina (for Jim Cummins):"
Anne Sexton,
Walt Whitman
Wallace Stevens,
Ted Berrigan,
Marvin Bell
and Philip Levine. LEE-VENE. There really is no end to a poet's choice of end words.
SLIDE - THE SESTINA FORM IN FICTION
The sestina form is also found in fiction, thanks to Alice Mattison, in her novel "In Case We're Separated." Mattison takes a new twist on the sestina by using the thirteen stories in the book to represent in prose format, the thirteen stanzas of a double sestina. She uses repeated topics instead of repeated words. Her topics repeat themselves and each story includes the following:
a glass of water,
a sharp point
a cord,
a mouth,
an exchange,
and a map that may be wrong.
SLIDE - SESTINA IN VISUAL ART
The sestina can also transform itself outside of the written word, taking on a visual form. In The Sestina Project, a production of The Trustman Art Gallery in Boston the exhibit featured a "visual equivalent" of assorted sestinas by poets including John Ashbery, Honor Moore and Judith Kroll, and visual artist/poet Jane Kamine.
Kamine explored the visual and verbal terms of the sestina in figurative and abstract images. She substituted colors, patterns and pictographs for the end words in sestinas to produce a "meditative" and "kaleidoscopic" wall piece that represented the figurative and abstract images to express the poem.
SLIDE
I hope I've sparked your interest enough to try your hand at writing your own sestinas.
I will close with my two favorite quotes on sestinas:
The sestina is a form
like a thin sheet of flame,
folding and infolding
upon itself….
Ezra Pound
"A tight skin over chaos:
a skim of meaning over
meaninglessness."
George Szirtes
The language of poetry can indeed be a very thin disguise, or type of skin, over the skeleton of form. The skeletal form is where the poet can hang emotions, language, and desires.
The sestina changes along with the times. I'm sure it will be around for a long time to come. Thank you.
FAME - CD FADE IN
AT END THANK INSTRUCTORS
E. ETHELBERT MILLER - ED OCHESTER
APRIL BERNARD - LIAM RECTOR
Q & A
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