For novelists and screenwriters
From your imagination to the page
lawriterslab.com
6 out of 6 people (100%) think this is worth doing.
(What is RSS?)
How I did it: I majored in formalist poetry. My approach may not be the most romantic, but my professor was ex-military and graded on adherence to structure and complete sentences, so I learned quite early that charting in a spreadsheet got me A's. You can use this for any formalist poem.
1. Chart the meter, rhyme scheme, internal rhymes, whatever you need. For a Shakespearean sonnet, this would be 14 rows by 5 columns, with the rows labeled abab,cdcd,efef, gg.
For a Sestina, which repeats rather than rhymes, unless you really want to impress someone, this will be 39 lines, labeled 123456,615243,364125,532614,451362,246531 for the first 6 stanzas. For the three line tornada at the conclusion, the first line is 1,2, the second 3,4, the third, 5,6. You can rhyme and meter them, but it's not required.
2. WRITE THE END FIRST! Write your last three lines. Say something profound.
3. The words at the ends of each line of the tornada are 2,4, and 6. Write them in the end of any lines marked 2,4, and 6.
4. Pick a word from the middle of each line of the tornada that will be easy to work around. These are, in order, 1,3, and 5. Write these words in your spreadsheet in the lines labeled 1,3, and 5.
5. You now have a blank sestina. Fill in the spaces with all the big words you like, and try to create complete sentences.
Lessons & tips: Use very common words in your last three lines, or words with common homonyms if you want to be clever, but save your big words for the rest of the poem. It also helps to remember the end of a phrase or sentence doesn't have to be the end of a line.
Resources: The New Book of Forms by Lewis Turco
The Word Finder
Graph paper or a spreadsheet
Pencils and erasers. Pens are fine for stream-of-consciousness. They are terrible for formalist poetry.
I wrote a sestina entitled ‘Even Trees Grow Old’ a few years ago, and was rather pleased with it at the time. However, not only was said sestina wholly depressing, but I have now lost all copies of it, both paper and digital, so I have determined that I must write a new and better sestina.
i wrote one. it’s pretty bad, but it was a fun exercise. i’m going to keep writing them until something good emerges.
My practice of writing Haiku on Fridays has inspired me to attempt another form of poetry, the sestina, which has fascinated me for years. I have attempted more than once to complete one, but have never been satisfied with the results. Now I’m ready to try again. My favorite (although it doesn’t have the 3 line envoy stanza) is “Here in Kathmandu” by Donald Justice:
We have climbed the mountain.
There’s nothing more to do.
It is terrible to come down
To the valley
Where, amidst many flowers,
One thinks of snow,
As formerly, amidst snow,
Climbing the mountain,
One thought of flowers,
Tremulous, ruddy with dew,
In the valley.
One caught their scent coming down.
It is difficult to adjust, once down,
To the absence of snow.
Clear days, from the valley,
One looks up at the mountain.
What else is there to do?
Prayer wheels, flowers!
Let the flowers
Fade, the prayer wheels run down.
What have they to do
With us who have stood atop the snow
Atop the mountain,
Flags seen from the valley?
It might be possible to live in the valley,
To bury oneself among flowers,
If one could forget the mountain,
However, once looking down,
Stiff, blinded with snow,
One knew what to do.
Meanwhile it is not easy here in Kathmandu,
Especially when to the valley
That wind which means snow
Elsewhere, but here means flowers,
Comes down,
As soon it must, from the mountain.
(the accompanying photo is the Chobar Gorge in the Kathmandu Valley)
it seems so intimidating, but i think it’s totally doable. i’m doing nanowrimo, so it will have to wait until december. but i will do it, even if i have to write the worst sestina ever.
streetcarvisions is writing, writing, writing!
Once you get going, it gets easier. :)
I wrote my first sestina a couple weeks ago!
So proud and I feel so accomplished.
rgioc wants to garden
design my own clothes
Make a movie
Read As Many Books As I Can
visit antarctica
get my visa
go sailing
recycle more
be a model
WildcatGirl wants to Quit complaining
learn to play the harmonica
Visit China
explore Buddhism
Make 2009 My Best Year Yet
See Cirque du Soleil
adopt a kid
be a better writer
Travel to every state in the United States
learn to lip read
Get a tattoo
shhsecret wants to gain weight and get in shape
own a coffeeshop
Read all the books on my bookshelf
Give away a bunch of clothes I've been meaning to give away for a long time
have a regular sleep schedule
Learn to cook--fantastic, healthy, people-will-beg-me-for-the-recipe cooking.
