{"id":3619,"date":"2009-03-05T12:25:15","date_gmt":"2009-03-05T17:25:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=3619"},"modified":"2009-03-05T12:25:15","modified_gmt":"2009-03-05T17:25:15","slug":"a-half-dozen-words-to-bend-your-writing-mind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2009\/03\/a-half-dozen-words-to-bend-your-writing-mind\/","title":{"rendered":"A Half-Dozen Words to Bend Your Writing Mind"},"content":{"rendered":"

[Last in a series of posts involving six words. Part 1<\/a> asked you to define your life in a half-dozen words; Part 2<\/a>, your life’s <\/em>work. This one is much narrower in scope.]<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Hex<\/a>This isn’t normally the way I’d start a post — with poetry. (That typically happens only in my regular Friday whiskey river<\/em>-triggered ruminations<\/a>.) But I wanted to open with something useful to non-writing site visitors, as well as the writers who stop by.<\/p>\n

So let’s begin simply. And if you’re a writer looking for a challenge, keep reading!<\/p>\n

Sestina
\n<\/strong>by Elizabeth Bishop<\/em><\/p>\n

September rain falls on the house.
\nIn the failing light, the old grandmother
\nsits in the kitchen with the child
\nbeside the Little Marvel Stove,
\nreading the jokes from the almanac,
\nlaughing and talking to hide her tears.<\/p>\n

She thinks that her equinoctial tears
\nand the rain that beats on the roof of the house
\nwere both foretold by the almanac,
\nbut only known to a grandmother.
\nThe iron kettle sings on the stove.
\nShe cuts some bread and says to the child,<\/p>\n

It’s time for tea now<\/em>; but the child
\nis watching the teakettle’s small hard tears
\ndance like mad on the hot black stove,
\nthe way the rain must dance on the house.
\nTidying up, the old grandmother
\nhangs up the clever almanac<\/p>\n

on its string. Birdlike, the almanac
\nhovers half open above the child,
\nhovers above the old grandmother
\nand her teacup full of dark brown tears.
\nShe shivers and says she thinks the house
\nfeels chilly, and puts more wood in the stove.<\/p>\n

It was to be<\/em>, says the Marvel Stove.
\nI know what I know<\/em>, says the almanac.
\nWith crayons the child draws a rigid house
\nand a winding pathway. Then the child
\nputs in a man with buttons like tears
\nand shows it proudly to the grandmother.<\/p>\n

But secretly, while the grandmother
\nbusies herself about the stove,
\nthe little moons fall down like tears
\nfrom between the pages of the almanac
\ninto the flower bed the child
\nhas carefully placed in the front of the house.<\/p>\n

Time to plant tears<\/em>, says the almanac.
\nThe grandmother sings to the marvelous stove
\nand the child draws another inscrutable house.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Pretty great, huh? Yet a certain type of writer regards this with apprehension (if not outright terror).<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

For a writer of prose, and prose only, the act of writing within poetry’s constraints of formal structure can be pretty excruciating. (True, you can always fall back on the old prose-poem trick. And it’s also true that some prose poetry really can’t be neatly classified as anything else. But for the most part, when I see a “prose poem,” it’s hard not think to myself: Slacker<\/em>.)<\/p>\n

Beyond the basics, for a prose writer surely the most torturous forms of poetry are those which require a particular pattern not just of meter or rhyme, but of the words themselves.<\/p>\n

And among these scarifying forms, surely the form known as the sestina holds a special place.<\/p>\n

It’s a complicated, challenging form, and not one I’d recommend if you’re just looking to noodle around with something to while away a lunch hour of writing.<\/p>\n

But if you’re really jammed up against a classic writer’s block, with a desert of three days ahead of you when you have no<\/em> freaking idea what to write about — let alone how to write it — try a sestina. Just try<\/em> one. One<\/em>.<\/p>\n

First, forget forms anywhere nearly as simple as 14-line sonnets.\u00a0 A sestina contains 39 (!) lines, broken up into seven stanzas. The first six stanzas each contain six lines; the last, three lines only.<\/p>\n

As for meter, in theory a sestina’s should be iambic pentameter. But the form frustrates so many writers — poets or not — that this requirement is often (maybe mostly) ignored. Other rules are likewise relaxed from time to time, and alternative “official”\u00a0 definitions have been introduced over the centuries.<\/p>\n

All of that sounds complicated enough, right? But when you consider the sestina’s unique, central requirement, you may (as I do) begin to perspire:<\/p>\n

Start by selecting any six words in your native language. Choose them however you like, but choose them carefully: you’re going to be shackled to them for the sestina’s whole 39 lines. (Note too that choosing elementary function words like “the,” “it,” “and,” and so on is frowned on — go back to your prose poetry, you slacker.) Number the words 1 through (duh) 6.<\/p>\n

Now arrange the words, and the lines, in the following manner:<\/p>\n