Curiosity 41: Sestina

Continuing my self-education on poetic forms, today it's the sestina, a French form, usually unrhymed, consisting of six verses of six lines each, typically followed by a three-line envoi. The end words of the first stanza are repeated in a different order as the end words of the subsequent five stanzas, while the closing envoi contains all six words, two per line, placed at the middle and end of each of the three lines. Here is a more straightforward rendition of what the pattern looks like (including the envoi):

          1 2 3 4 5 6
          6 1 5 2 4 3
          3 6 4 1 2 5
          5 3 2 6 1 4
          4 5 1 3 6 2
          2 4 6 5 3 1
          (6 2) (1 4) (5 3)

Whew, right?

Or then there's this, which Wikipedia explains thus: "Another way of visualising the pattern of line-ending words for each stanza is by the procedure known as retrogradatio cruciata, which may be rendered as 'backward crossing.' The second stanza can be seen to have been formed from three sets of pairs (6–1, 5–2, 4–3), or two triads (1–2–3, 4–5–6). The 1–2–3 triad appears in its original order, but the 4–5–6 triad is reversed and superimposed upon it."

I have no idea what that means. All this will bear some study. But I found a couple of examples to start with (and here are some more).

Beautiful Poetry

          “Being so caught up
            So mastered.”
                                       —Yeats

I was too shy to say anything but Your poems are so beautiful.

What kinds of things, feelings, or ideas inspire you,

I mean, outside the raw experiences of your life?

He turned a strange crosshatched color

as if he stood in a clouded painting, and said, Thanks,

but no other phenomena intrude upon my starlit mind.

 

I see you are wondering what this is all about. Don’t mind

me, I’m talking to myself again. Yes, poetry is nice and often beautiful,

yet it doesn’t beget much attention, money, or even a simple thanks

for placing the best words in the best order. That’s when I forget all about your

incessant demands, and the restless subject leaps the stream in Technicolor—

until the Remembrancer appears and says, Stop this wasteful life.

 

Doctor, lawyer, thief. These fancies of yours could cost a life

or worse, two. Meanwhile, he perceives my gifted body upholding my mind

as I’m explaining my stuff on the Unicorn Tapestries, cheeks starting to color,

feathers ruffling, quiet shudders. He shrugs, Your content sounds too beautiful

but I’d like to read it sometime. Okay. He says all the right things, like I love you

Hyacinth Girl. Things get interesting until the sudden blow: Thanks

 

For the memories. What I’ll think seeing his new work in The New Yorker is Thanks

for nothing, asshole, as he drops me for that prolific pastoral life

with his wife upstate. The more I think about it, it all depends upon your

phantom attention. Surely a world embroiders itself in one’s mind

at any moment, words resounding, ardent present clarifyingly beautiful

And beautifully truthful. You know? Here I should put in a lapis color

 

Or a murky midnight blue. Or have the crowd stagger by in a riot of color

pinning down the helpless beast with spears and ritualistic thanks

to their gods. What one really wants to get at is the real, the eternally beautiful

like The White Album or something. That’s what makes one perilous life

worth living. All the brute indifference, humiliation, and failure can put one in the mind

to give up, freak out, kill somebody, heart battered, so mastered. Oh you

 

Wherever I go, on the subway, in my cubicle, at play, in sleep, it’s always you

of the air, overpowering my senses like a Dutch master in one pure color,

its fiction at full speed, walls breaking, a clarity panorama for the mind

hunting for meaning and finding it at last! Now look at all the work I did, and not one thanks

Not even flowers. Off you rush to watch him accept another award in that life

We can only dream of. From where you sit it all seems so beautiful

 

And I finally understand you. For that I can’t express enough thanks

As the subject is the best color for me in the difficulty of this lonely life.

It’s always caught up in my mind, what could be more beautiful.

                                                        —Camille Guthrie

 

Farm Implements and Rutabagas in a Landscape

The first of the undecoded messages read: “Popeye sits in thunder,   

Unthought of. From that shoebox of an apartment,

From livid curtain’s hue, a tangram emerges: a country.”

Meanwhile the Sea Hag was relaxing on a green couch: “How pleasant   

To spend one’s vacation en la casa de Popeye,” she scratched

Her cleft chin’s solitary hair. She remembered spinach

And was going to ask Wimpy if he had bought any spinach.   

“M’love,” he intercepted, “the plains are decked out in thunder   

Today, and it shall be as you wish.” He scratched

The part of his head under his hat. The apartment

Seemed to grow smaller. “But what if no pleasant

Inspiration plunge us now to the stars? For this is my country.”

Suddenly they remembered how it was cheaper in the country.   

Wimpy was thoughtfully cutting open a number 2 can of spinach   

When the door opened and Swee’pea crept in. “How pleasant!”

But Swee’pea looked morose. A note was pinned to his bib. “Thunder   

And tears are unavailing,” it read. “Henceforth shall Popeye’s apartment   

Be but remembered space, toxic or salubrious, whole or scratched.”

Olive came hurtling through the window; its geraniums scratched

Her long thigh. “I have news!” she gasped. “Popeye, forced as you know to flee the country

One musty gusty evening, by the schemes of his wizened, duplicate father, jealous of the apartment

And all that it contains, myself and spinach

In particular, heaves bolts of loving thunder

At his own astonished becoming, rupturing the pleasant

Arpeggio of our years. No more shall pleasant

Rays of the sun refresh your sense of growing old, nor the scratched   

Tree-trunks and mossy foliage, only immaculate darkness and thunder.”   

She grabbed Swee’pea. “I’m taking the brat to the country.”

“But you can’t do that—he hasn’t even finished his spinach,”   

Urged the Sea Hag, looking fearfully around at the apartment.

But Olive was already out of earshot. Now the apartment

Succumbed to a strange new hush. “Actually it’s quite pleasant

Here,” thought the Sea Hag. “If this is all we need fear from spinach

Then I don’t mind so much. Perhaps we could invite Alice the Goon over”—she scratched

One dug pensively—“but Wimpy is such a country

Bumpkin, always burping like that.” Minute at first, the thunder

Soon filled the apartment. It was domestic thunder,   

The color of spinach.Popeye chuckled and scratched

His balls: it sure was pleasant to spend a day in the country.

                                                    —John Ashbery