Nathan D and the Sestina Family

A couple of years ago, you may remember, I blogged about the sestina, an intricate medieval poetic form, in a post on my poem "Vietnam Era Vet." Well, it probably won't surprise you that I assign my poetry-writing students at the University of Northern Iowa to write sestinas. And for the most part (at least so I always thought) the students are okay with the form. This semester, in my Beginning Poetry Writing course, it didn't work out quite that way. Several people had quite a tough battle with the sestina. Here's a poem by my student Nathan that deals with that issue in simply hilarious ways.   My Love of the Sestina                 by Nathan Dahlhauser   Over-structuring is the heart of the sestina.   I suppose to say that I hate sestinas   may be a tad harsh, but the thing with a sestina   is that, for one, they are so damned repetitive. Sestinas   may be seen as "classical," to some, but let's be honest. A sestina   is just a sestina. I say, "Fuck the sestina!"   You may ask of me, "Sir, why are you so angry? Sestinas   are just another form of poetry. What did the sestina   ever do to you?" First off, sestinas   use the same words over and over again. I'm using the word "sestina"   to illustrate how annoying this can be. Here comes another. SESTINA.   Would you like me to use a different word? Nope, I'm now bound to use "sestina."   Second, there is very little room to convey emotion or meaning in a sestina   because it is the same words being used. Even in the times where sestinas   do get a message across, the word choices feel so forced. Sestina.   See, I had to end that line with the word "sestina"   because I set myself up for it in the first stanza. All the sestina   does is constrict a poem's motion, much like a tiny room sestina   that resembles a sub-stair broom closet. Sure, I'm being childish and sestina   poking fun at the fat kid in second grade, but I'm not the only one, sestina   NO ONE LIKES HIM! He’s a big FAT fart face! That is the sestina   for you, in a nutshell. Are you as tired of this sestina   as I am? Jesus! Buddha! Allah! By the beard of Zeus! Sestinas   make me curse their maker and their maker's maker by sestina   association. Thank my lucky stars I'm nearly finished with this damned poem!   Shit, did I just slip there and use "damned poem" rather than "sestina"?   Fuck it, it works regardless. "Damned poem," "stupid form of poetry,"   they are both synonyms for that single word. Sestina.   I'm just about done. This here is the last stanza of the ONLY sestina   I will write in my lifetime. What? One MORE stanza!? Fucking poem!   That'll work as well, I suppose. Forgive me if I make this sestina   even more cynical. I've had about enough of the aforementioned word.   Much like Jan speaking of Marcia, I just want to scream to anyone saying sestina, "Sestina,   Sestina,   Sestina!"   I hate Sestina’s family. I hate its sister, Sestina. I hate its brother, also named Sestina.   I hate its parents. Who names three children ALL Sestina?   Fuck you, Sestina! I hope you go to hell and burn with Satan’s sister, Sestina. Brilliant, don't you think? And you might quite easily feel the same as Nathan if you had looked up sestina in Wikipedia, say, and learned what the word-cycling pattern is called: retrogradatio cruciata. Doesn't that remind you of the Cruciatus Curse in Harry Potter, which "inflicts unbearable pain on the recipient of the curse" (Wikipedia)? Unbearable pain, indeed! Nathan's genius touch here is in his repetons (the technical name of the repeated words . . . sorry). Instead of choosing six words, he uses only one. Wow. And how he uses them, that's brilliant too. I was asking all the wrong questions: Was he punning on the word "stanza" (Italian for room) at the end of the third stanza? In the second line of the fourth stanza, was "sestina" standing in for the word "because"? Nope, Nathan said. Just throwing in the word "sestina." 'Cause he had to. Comic genius. Okay, that's it for today. Hope you learned some schtuff about poetic craft. Like the rich consonance at the end of Nathan's poem: the instances of s, t, and n sounds in "Satan's sister, Sestina." Meh. I hope, even better, you had a good laugh. Word. No. Sestina.