Sestina

I have spent the past several weeks writing poetry.  Sorta.

That wouldn’t be surprising.  I like the way that poetry makes you look at things from fresh angles.  That and the fact that my writing is a bit on the embroidered side to begin with make writing verse a natural for me.  But I do not enjoy reading it.  Way too much work to get the full meaning from something with layers and layers.  I tend to read to find out what happens next, and I’m no better about that in my 60s than I was in my teens.

So, decades ago it occurred to me that if I were not going to read poetry, it didn’t seem right to write the stuff.  An ethical choice.  And I’ve stuck with it for the most part with a detour now and then when prose would not say what needed expressing.  That’s been happening a bit more often lately as my ability to hold coherent thought for any length of time has been disintegrating.  Don’t even get pleasure from complaining any more, and that’s pathetic.

But late last month, I ran across some mention of a writing challenge.  A poem a day for a month.  And that caught my interest.  As I learned with the novel, you can do almost anything for a month–not necessarily well, but the action is possible.  And NOT doing things is another subject entirely.  So I decided to do it.  Put on my best what the hell attitude and signed up.

Me and about a thousand people started April with a poem.

It has been interesting.  And not all that difficult.  After all, it doesn’t even have to rhyme.  “The best words in the best order”; Coleridge didn’t say a thing there about meter and rhyme pattern.  So I have managed something every day, and if it has sometimes been bad writing, and if it has sometimes been out of left field, that doesn’t matter.  I have done it.

And yesterday I came to the Sestina.  If that had lobbed at me during the first week, I’d have quit then and there.  But after twenty-seven days, and with the end at my fingertips, I was not about to surrender because of a form.  (now, to give ‘em credit, the powers did allow for an alternative, non-sestina, but that did seem like a cop out.)

For anyone who might want to try, and there are plenty of masochists out there, a sestina is a bit like sudoku with words, or the dictionary playing musical chairs.  There are a gazillion variations, but the root is:  six words.  The form is six verses, each with six lines, capped off with a three-liner.  The same six words are used over and over to end the lines, but they have to be in a different arrangement with each verse.  And if that makes no sense…  Say my poem begins with the six lines:

He had one

She had two

They made three

But wanted four

I had five

and puppy makes six

The words–one, two, three, four, five, six–at the end of the lines are what we play with.  You come up with five more verses and none of those words can be in the same position in the poem a second time.  “One” can end the second, third, forth, fifth, or sixth.  And then one less than that, and on.

When you make it to the end, the tercet uses all six words, two to a line.

It made my head hurt, but I wrote the damn thing.  The disturbing part is that I can see how you could get hooked.

Never say never.

This is what I wound up with.  It’s not good, but I wrote it and it is mine.

The Nymph Refrains

I am not bright.
Not bright enough for you, Lucifer.  The sun
will not stop in the heaven
at my command, nor will the blue
sea turn to gold
for me.  I cannot dance on air.

You want a magic air,
Lucifer, one for transmuting straw and gold,
And I cannot for all your bright
and cruel beauty, sing down the sun.
Apples will grow blue
before I sing that song, or god will step down from Heaven.

I want the heaven
of your bright
regard.  The blue
vaulting sky knows you are air
to me, and sun,
and more by far than gold.

But I could lose the sun,
Lucifer.  And lose all promises of heaven,
If I cannot ignore your gold
and honeyed words.  And even god can see your bright
sweet whisperings turn air
to mead and strip the sky of blue.

If ever suitor blew
hot and hotter, it is you, with your air
of I care not, and the heat of the sun
in your hands.  You burn gold
with your most glancing touch, and give lie to heaven
making midnight bright.

You cannot, trickster, have what gold
is mine by right.  My tunes belong to blue
day and sunlit air.
The gift of heaven,
and none of yours.  You can not steal from me, Bright
Star, to quench the sun.

I have no spelling air to call the sun,
to wrench the gold from day and steal the light of heaven.
My soul, I cannot write blue songs.  I am not bright enough.