Blog Assignment 4: Sestina or "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" Imitation

Key words in describing a sestina are "obsession," "repetition," and "complexity." The poetry form is attributed to Arnaut Daniel, the Provencal troubadour of the twelfth century. The name "troubadour" likely comes from trobar, which means "to invent or compose verse." The troubadours sang their verses accompanied by music and were quite competitive, each trying to top the next in wit, as well as complexity and difficulty of style. Troubadours often wrote poems about courtly love. Later, the sestina migrated to Italy, where Dante andPetrarch practiced the form with great reverence for Daniel, who, as Petrarch said, was "the first among all others, great master of love."

ASSIGNMENT CHOICE #1: Write a poem consisting of 39 lines. Those 39 lines should be broken up into 6 (SIX) stanzas and a 3-line envoi. The end-words of the first stanza through get repeated in different patterns throughout the next 5 stanzas and the three-line envoi.  The form is as follows, where each numeral indicates the stanza position and the letters represent end-words:

1. ABCDEF
2. FAEBDC
3. CFDABE
4. ECBFAD
5. DEACFB
6. BDFECA
7. (envoi) ECA or ACE

The envoi, sometimes known as the tornada, must also include the remaining three end-words, BDF, in the course of the three lines so that all six recurring words appear in the final three lines. In place of a rhyme scheme, the sestina relies on end-word repetition to effect a sort of rhyme.

STEP 1: It might help to preselect the 6 words that you'd like to be emphasizing in various patterns at the end of your 39 lines.  Most of the time, you want those to be nouns or verbs.  Some poets find it helpful to choose words that are HOMOGRAPHS - words that have the same spelling but are pronounced differently and have different meanings. This allows a poet to use the same word but to extract multiple meanings from that word. You'll find a link to some examples of homographs: HERE

STEP 2: Once you've selected the 6 words, you might want to use the Sestina Generator website. Plug in your 6 words, and the sestina generator will do all the work for you of showing you how the end of each of your stanzas will look.  You can find the sestina generator at: http://dilute.net/sestinas/

STEP 3: To get a feel for the form, read some examples of sestinas.  Ezra Pound and John Ashbery were poets who took on the form. See Pound's  "Sestina: Altaforte." Pound chose: "peace," "music," "clash," "opposing," "crimson," and "rejoicing." The words, while general enough to lend themselves to multiple meanings, are common enough that they also present Pound with the difficult task of making every instance fresh. Here are the first two stanzas (after a prefatory stanza which sets the scene):

I
Damn it all! all this our South stinks peace.
You whoreson dog, Papiols, come! Let's to music!
I have no life save when the swords clash.
But ah! when I see the standards gold, vair, purple, opposing
And the broad fields beneath them turn crimson,
Then howl I my heart nigh mad with rejoicing.

II
In hot summer have I great rejoicing
When the tempests kill the earth's foul peace,
And the lightnings from black heav'n flash crimson,
And the fierce thunders roar me their music
And the winds shriek through the clouds mad, opposing,
And through all the riven skies God's swords clash.

Contrast Pound’s sestina with John Ashbery’s "Farm Implements and Rutabagas in a Landscape," 

The Web version of the literary magazine McSweeney’s maintains a repository of contemporary sestinas. Check out the modern-day sestinas they publish here: http://www.mcsweeneys.net/columns/sestinas

STEP 4: Publish the sestina to your blog and give it the following title: Sestina

ASSIGNMENT CHOICE #2: Thirteen Sets of Eyes

Write an imitation of "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird," which is an exercise on perspectivism. The poetic exercise is related to philosophical nominalism. Basically, we can grasp the whole world by concentrating on each of its facets--just like we can appreciate a diamond more when we're noticing the qualities that each of its facets brings to the whole gemstone.  The poem takes its cue from haiku. Check your textbook from a brief lesson on haiku and examples.  The poem also has links to imagism and cubism. 

In this poem, sight is the dominant perceiving. Each stanza is almost cinematic, as though a camera focuses on a mountain panorama and then zooms in to the blackbird.  Each stanza zooms in on an element of the blackbird that we might not have noticed in any of the other camera shots.

You can find imitations and parodies of the famous poem all over the internet.  The subject matter of the imitations includes but is not limited to M & M candies, burritos, tortillas, Pringles, trees, etc. You might check out the following imitations:

* http://schnickledoogr2.livejournal.com/19867.html

* http://www.much-ado.net/flourish&blotts/main.php?p=pringle

* http://www.teachmix.com/litartgreen/node/66

* http://www.fictionpress.com/s/1894987/1/Thirteen-Ways-of-Looking-at-a-Tree

*http://organizationsandmarkets.com/2008/12/11/thirteen-ways-of-looking-at-a-burrito/