If you have ever felt a thought circling in your mind, refusing to let go, you already understand the spirit of the sestina. It is perhaps the most intricate, maddening, and magically obsessive form in Western poetry.
Unlike the sonnet, which snaps shut with a logical conclusion, or the villanelle, which sways back and forth like a song, the sestina spirals. It doesn’t rhyme. Instead, it relies on a relentless recycling of six specific end-words. To understand this form, we have to travel back to 12th-century Provence, to a man whom Dante Alighieri called “il miglior fabbro”—the better craftsman.
The Inventor: Arnaut Daniel
The sestina was born from the mind of Arnaut Daniel, a troubadour active around the year 1200. The troubadours were poet-musicians of southern France who invented the concept of courtly love, but Daniel belonged to a specific school known as trobar clus, or "closed form." These poets didn't want their work to be easy; they wanted it to be like a jeweled puzzle box.
Daniel invented the sestina for his poem "Lo ferm voler qu'el cor m'intra" ("The firm will that enters my heart"). He designed a structure of thirty-nine lines: six stanzas of six lines each, followed by a three-line envoy (or tornada).
The trick is in the "teleutons"—the six words that end the lines of the first stanza. These words are repeated as the end-words of every subsequent stanza, but not in the same order. They rotate in a specific, spiral pattern known as retrogradatio cruciata (retrograde cross).
If we number the words of the first stanza 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, the second stanza reorders them as 6, 1, 5, 2, 4, 3. The bottom word flips to the top, then the top word, then the second-to-last, and so on. This creates a churning effect, kneading the meaning of the words over and over until the poem concludes.
The Evolution of the Form
The sestina might have died in Provence if not for the Italian heavyweights. Dante and Petrarch were obsessed with Arnaut Daniel’s invention. They brought it into Italian, cementing its reputation as a form for high intellect and deep spiritual obsession.
It took centuries to cross the channel to England. The first major English example appeared in the Renaissance, penned by Sir Philip Sidney. Sidney didn't just write a sestina; he wrote a double sestina—78 lines of rotating sorrow—in his pastoral romance "Arcadia." His poem, "Ye Goatherd Gods," uses the end-words: mountains, valleys, forests, music, morning, and evening.
Here is how Sidney handles that churning repetition. Notice how the landscape seems to trap the speaker:
"Ye goatherd gods, that love the grassy mountains,
Ye nymphs which haunt the springs in pleasant valleys,
Ye satyrs joyed with free and quiet forests,
Vouchsafe your silent ears to plaining music,
Which to my woes gives still an early morning,
And draws the dolor on till weary evening."
By the 18th and 19th centuries, the form largely fell out of style, dismissed as too artificial. But the Modernists, led by Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot, dusted it off. Pound, who loved the troubadours, wrote the thunderous "Sestina: Altaforte," a persona poem spoken by a warlord who loves the sounds of battle.
The Modern Masterpiece: Elizabeth Bishop
However, the undisputed master of the modern sestina is Elizabeth Bishop. Her 1956 poem, simply titled "Sestina," proves that this rigid form can feel as natural as a conversation.
Bishop chooses six domestic, deceptively simple words: house, grandmother, child, stove, almanac, and tears. Instead of high drama, she gives us a quiet kitchen scene that feels timeless and slightly eerie.
Listen to how she weaves these words in the opening:
"September rain falls on the house.
In the failing light, the old grandmother
sits in the kitchen with the child
beside the Little Marvel Stove,
reading the jokes from the almanac,
laughing and talking to hide her tears."
As the poem spirals, the tears transfer from the grandmother to the teakettle, and the almanac takes on a life of its own. The repetition captures the feeling of grief and memory—how we go over the same details in our minds, hoping they will yield a new meaning.
Another brilliant modern example is John Ashbery’s "The Painter." Ashbery, known for his playfulness, uses the form to talk about art itself, with end-words like brush, canvas, and subject. He shows that the sestina doesn't have to be mournful; it can be witty and surreal.
How to Write Your First Sestina
If you are brave enough to attempt this "closed" form, here is some advice to keep you from getting trapped in your own puzzle box:
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Choose Your Six Words Carefully: This is the most critical step. Avoid words that are too specific or rigid (like "encyclopedia" or "orange").
- Tip: Pick words that are polysemous (have multiple meanings). A word like "leaves" can be a noun (on a tree) or a verb (to go away).
- Tip: Mix concrete nouns (like house) with abstract concepts (like grief).
- Don't Let the Words Boss You Around: The biggest mistake beginners make is stopping the sentence at the end of the line. Use enjambment. Let your sentences run over the line breaks so the end-word feels like a natural part of the flow, rather than a speed bump.
- The Pattern: You don't need to memorize the mathematics. Just remember the "Bottom-Top" rule. Take the previous stanza's order and pick the words in this sequence: Last, First, Second-to-Last, Second, Third-to-Last, Third.
- The Envoi: The final three lines must contain all six words (usually three at the ends of the lines and three tucked inside). This is your sprint to the finish—make it tight and impactful.
Writing a sestina is an exercise in endurance. It forces you to look at your subject from six different angles, turning it over and over until, like Arnaut Daniel, you have crafted something unbreakable.
