Back down now and the next spare is FOR:The slow, who claim their victory FOR
Only one unused end-word left, FREE:The weak. I’ll tell you this for FREE
So we shuttled from bottom to top, bottom to top, bottom to top taking STICKS, ONE, THRIVE, TO, FOR and FREE. In real digits that would be 6,1,5,2,4,3. This string of numbers is our formula. Stanza 2 now looks like this:But you should know that triumph STICKSLike post-it notes and every ONEWill soon forget. The kind who THRIVEAre those who show compassion TOThe slow, who claim their victory FORThe weak. I’ll tell you this for FREE,
Now Stanza 3 will take the sixth line from Stanza 2, then the first, then the fifth and so on, according to that formula, and build itself accordingly. The sixth line of Stanza 3 is now FREE:You think that winning sets you FREE?
The topmost free end-line is STICKS:No, it’s a poison pill that STICKS
Then FOR, WON, TO and THRIVE: The homophone WON is perfectly acceptable for ONE.In victory’s throat. Worth striving FOR?The golden plaudits you have WONAre valueless and hollow TOOThe victor’s laurels never THRIVE,
Now we do the same to Stanzas 4, 5 and 6, shuttling between lines 6, 1, 5, 2, 4, in formula order.The weeds of self-delusion THRIVEOn pride: they flourish, thick and FREE,To choke your glory. Thickly TOOThe burr of disappointment STICKSTo tarnish all the gold you’ve WON.Is victory worth the fighting FORWhen friendship’s hand is only FORThe weak, whose ventures never THRIVE?I’d so much rather be the ONEWho’s always second. I am FREETo lose. I know how much it STICKSInside your craw to come in TWOBut you should learn that Number TWOCan have no real meaning, FORWe all must cross the River STYXAnd go where victors never THRIVE,No winner’s rostrum there, so FREEYour mind from numbers: Death has WON.
The sixth is the last, after that the whole pattern would repeat. All we have to do now is construct the envoi, which contains all the hero words12 in a strict order: the second and fifth word in the top line, the fourth and third in the middle line, the sixth and first in the bottom line.EnvoiIn order TO improve and THRIVEStop yearning FOR success, be FREEIf this rule STICKS then all have WON.
It may have seemed a fiendishly complicated structure and it both is and isn’t. The key is to number the lines and follow the 6, 1, 5, 2, 4, 3 formula with (2–5, 4–3, 6–1 for the envoi). If you don’t like numbers you might prefer to letter the lines alphabetically and make a note of this scheme:
ABCDEF, FAEBDC, CFDABE, ECBFAD, DEACFB, BDFECA
(BE/DC/FA)
If you want to understand the sestina’s shape, you might like to think of it as a spiral. Go back and put the tip of your forefinger on STICKS in Stanza 1, without taking it off the page move it in an anticlockwise circle passing through 1, 5, 2, 4 and 3. Do it a couple of times so you get the idea. I have made a table which you might find useful. It contains the end-lines of the sestina we built together, as well as ABC equivalents.
Sestina Table
I was rather fascinated by why a sestina works the way it does and whether it could be proved mathematically that you only need six stanzas for the pattern to repeat. Being a maths dunce, I approached my genius of a father who can find formulas for anything and he offered an elegant mathematical description of the sestina, showing its spirals and naming his algorithm in honour of Arnaud Daniel, the form’s inventor, who was something of a mathematician himself, so legend has it. This mathematical proof can be found in the Appendix. If like me, formulae with big Greek letters in them mean next to nothing, you will be as baffled by it as I am, but you might like, as I do, the idea that even something as ethereal, soulful and personal as a poem can be described by numbers…
Sestinas are still being written by contemporary poets. After their invention by the twelfth-century mathematician and troubadour Arnaud Daniel, examples in English have been written by poets as varied in manner as Sir Philip Sidney, Rossetti, Swinburne, Kipling, Pound, W. H. Auden, John Ashbery, Anthony Hecht, Marilyn Hacker, Donald Justice, Howard Nemerov and Kona Macphee (see if you can find her excellent sestina ‘IVF’). Swinburne’s ‘A Complaint to Lisa’ is a double sestina, twelve stanzas of twelve lines each, a terrifying feat first achieved by Sir Philip Sidney. I mean surely that’s just showing off…. I shall present two examples to show the possibilities of a form which my sample verse has made appear very false and stagy. The first is by Elizabeth Bishop, entitled simply ‘Sestina’, flowing between ten-, nine-and eight-syllable lines, ending with a final line of twelve:September rain falls on the house.In the failing light, the old grandmothersits in the kitchen with the childbeside the Little Marvel Stove,reading the jokes from the almanac,laughing and talking to hide her tears.She thinks that her equinoctial tearsand the rain that beats on the roof of the housewere both foretold by the almanac,but only known to a grandmother.The iron kettle sings on the stove.She cuts some bread and says to the child,It's time for tea now; but the childis watching the teakettle's small hard tearsdance like mad on the hot black stove,the way the rain must dance on the house.Tidying up, the old grandmotherhangs up the clever almanacon its string. Birdlike, the almanachovers half open above the child,hovers above the old grandmotherand her teacup full of dark brown tears.She shivers and says she thinks the housefeels chilly, and puts more wood in the stove.It was to be, says the Marvel Stove.I know what I know, says the almanac.With crayons the child draws a rigid houseand a winding pathway. Then the childputs in a man with buttons like tearsand shows it proudly to the grandmother.But secretly, while the grandmotherbusies herself about the stove,the little moons fall down like tearsfrom between the pages of the almanacinto the flower bed the childhas carefully placed in the front of the house.Time to plant tears, says the almanac.The grandmother sings to the marvelous stoveand the child draws another inscrutable house.
It is not considered de rigueur these days to enforce the end-word order of the envoi. This next (also called ‘Sestina’) is by the poet Ian Patterson–wonderful how his end-words slowly cycle their multiple meanings:Autumn as chill as rising water lapsand files us away under former stuffthinly disguised and thrown up on a screen;one turn of the key lifts a brass tumbler–another disaster probably averted, just,while the cadence drifts in dark and old.Voices of authority are burning an oldcar on the cobbles, hands on their laps,as if there was a life where justmen slept and didn’t strut their stuffon stage. I reach out for the tumblerand pour half a pint behind the screen.The whole body is in pieces. Screenmemories are not always as sharp as oldnoir phenomena.
