Sestina Sestina

The sestina is a difficult form
to master because of the excessive repetition
which usually seems gratuitous or else
makes the speaking voice sound downright mad.
Psychologists say madness characterizes our time.
That may be. For some reason the sestina

is an obsession of mine. My first sestina
was a complete failure. The form
tangled me in a net. By the time
I reached stanza two, the repetition
blabbed like an obnoxious drunk. I got so mad
I swore, and swore I’d write a good sestina or else.

I worked at nothing else,
only the sestina. Day and night, one insipid sestina
after another. Every one I made made me mad.
I should never have strayed from the open forms.
They seem like a fairyland now. Repetition
enchants the mind until time

itself seems to be a sestina. In no time
my universe was bound to six words and nothing else
mattered. That’s the danger or repetition.
It creates an illusion of eternity. The sestina
appears to be it’s own heaven. The form,
fulfilled, has the appeal. So does mad-

ness, psychologists say. But the mad
are their own poems. Their time
is malleable-no need to conform
to architecture designed by someone else.
The maker of sestinas
sulks under the weight of repetition,

flails in a snarl of repetition,
repeating himself like a nervous zodiac for his nomad
mind. So stay away from sestinas.
There are better ways to spend your time.
Write a novel. Take up the guitar. Or else
stifle your creative impulses altogether. Chloroform

the Muse! This form is a hungry monster.
Repetition wants something else every time. Six
mad kings and you, locked in a cell-that’s a sestina.

-Adam LaFevre