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Sestina

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Sestina

‘Mexican Sestina’ and Other Poetry by Geoffrey Smagacz

The Society
January 26, 2025
Culture, Poetry, Sestina
8 Comments
. Mexican Sestina Perhaps I left because I got too bored, and no one could put sense in my thick head, or talk me out of trekking to the beach by reading newsclips of prolific death by drug cartels or...

‘A Christmas Eve Sestina’ by Mary Gardner

The Society
December 24, 2024
Beauty, Poetry, Sestina
8 Comments
. A Christmas Eve Sestina “He who sings prays twice.” ---Saint Augustine The vagabond had too much Christmas cheer. He doesn’t notice that the air is cold Although his clothes are unseasonably light. A...

‘The Meat Purveyor’s Son’: A Sestina by Shirley Bunyan

The Society
April 11, 2024
Humor, Love Poems, Poetry, Sestina
14 Comments
. The Meat Purveyor’s Son Aesthetically impaired, she was the heir to daddy’s fortune. She was plumpish, short and much too close together were the eyes. She hankered after marriage with a man to birth at...

Poems on Dogs and Humans, by Joshua C. Frank

The Society
February 16, 2024
Beauty, Culture, Poetry, Sestina
16 Comments
. Last Visit to the Beach a sestina The beach, untouched by Time throughout the years As millions of waves washed from the sea, As Time transformed me, now no more a boy, Where I would walk each season on that...
poem/jobe/sestina

‘Crossing the Swamp’: A Sestina by Carey Jobe

The Society
August 16, 2023
Poetry, Satire, Sestina
10 Comments
. Crossing the Swamp After about an hour hiking the swamp, I knew. A week’s rains flooded out the trail. Tall sameness of pines stood round me. Stagnant water, coffee dark, spread before me. My new...
poem/frank/culture

‘Red Flags’: A Sestina Sonnet by Joshua C. Frank

The Society
May 28, 2023
Culture, Deconstructing Communism, Poetry, Rondel, Sestina
16 Comments
. Red Flags a sestina sonnet The national flags of the Westerners’ lands Turn red in the dim, fading light of the sunset, Like Communist red—bloody floors in a prison. All the flags look the same when the...

‘Circles,’ a Sestina by Jack DesBois

The Society
November 20, 2021
Beauty, Poetry, Sestina
8 Comments
. Circles It seems to me that living comes in circles, That nothing, even this, is ever new, That all that we create is a stale rhyme, A now that cannot cover marks of then. It seems to me that every extant...

A Poem for the Chibok School Girls of Nigeria, by Bethany Mootsey

The Society
April 15, 2021
Culture, Poetry, Sestina, Terrorism
18 Comments
. Sestina 276 On the night of April 14-15, 2014, 276 mostly Christian female students were kidnapped from a high school by the Islamic terrorist group Boko Haram in Nigeria The dream was vivid, sickeningly...

‘Rosarium’: A Sestina and Other Poetry by Benjamin Thomas Cepican

The Society
January 17, 2021
Beauty, Culture, Poetry, Poetry Forms, Sestina
7 Comments
. Rosarium a sestina A rose arises red from its green sheath Adorned with swords that prick and pierce: the thorn, Whose vigil kept ensures its life's not brief. Unmatched in charm though fresh from garden...

‘Reprobate’s Prayer Sestina’ by Mike Bryant

The Society
July 6, 2019
Beauty, Culture, Humor, Poetry, Poetry Forms, Sestina
14 Comments
  I lift my eyes and pray to God above, deliver me, dear Lord, from Satan's Hell. I come to You with heart brimful of Love, content to drink life's water from Your well. And if, by chance, I do...

‘Sestina of Night’ by Karen Melander Magoon

The Society
April 21, 2018
Beauty, Poetry, Poetry Forms, Sestina
4 Comments
The lamp holds sway along the shadowed streets A penumbra encircles its sweet shine As night rests softly like a feathered cloak Upon a multitude of dancing stars And night and stars and lamp become a...

How to Write a Sestina (with Examples and Diagrams)

The Society
December 14, 2016
Education, Poetry, Poetry Forms, Sestina
2 Comments
by Dusty Grein The sestina originated among the troubadours of medieval France's Provence region, and the modern thirty-nine line form is attributed to one of these traveling poet entertainers of the...

‘Sestina: Falun Dafa’ by Sylvia Telfer

The Society
March 2, 2016
Beauty, Human Rights in China, Poetry, Sestina
3 Comments
  In China now are shadows forged from fire, a DNA pre-history. They cloud troubled villages, rice fields, goldfish ponds. Stones form, creating outlines with moving corners of such mild movements...
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‘The Indian Ballad Of Gitchy Naigow (A Sestina)’ by Douglas Thornton

The Society
April 2, 2013
Poetry, Sestina
2 Comments
Oh sad age, how the years will pass us by, Pass us and then our last visions refuse, Refuse us to look on our childhood skies: Oh daughter I am a burden to you, And this vision of mine, oh cherished...
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‘Dust, a Sestina’ by Sally Carter

The Society
December 11, 2012
Poetry, Sestina
5 Comments
The village school is cold and still. Its entrance gate is rusted shut, the playground overwhelmed by sounds of loaded lorries, hissing past, no noise but theirs to fill a school where only shadows come...
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‘The Colour of Dying’ (a Sestina) by Maroula Blades

The Society
November 27, 2012
Poetry, Sestina
2 Comments
The purple snail (Purpura patula pansa) is found in the Mixtec villages of the Oaxacan Coast in Mexico. The inhabitants carefully bleed the snails and then return them to the rocks. But due to illegal dyeing...
  1. Roy Eugene Peterson on ‘What the Caterpillar Calls the End’: A Poem by Scharlie MeeuwsMay 23, 2025

    Sharlie, this is one of the most enchanting multi-layered poems I have read that flowed so fluidly. I was left…

  2. Frank Rable on ‘Sound and Fury’: A Poem by Susan Jarvis BryantMay 23, 2025

    I was thinking William Faulkner, but now I remember that he borrowed "Sound and Fury" from Shakespeare. It was an…

  3. James A. Tweedie on ‘The Dyer’s Second Tale—A Medieval Heist’: A Poem by Paul A. FreemanMay 23, 2025

    Delightful. Delight-full. Full of delight. Etc. ad nauseum. Paul, what a treat. And how much fun it must have been…

  4. Alan Steinle on ‘What the Caterpillar Calls the End’: A Poem by Scharlie MeeuwsMay 23, 2025

    What death declared, life then revised: The soul remade, the self-surprised. I like these lines from your poem. They remind…

  5. James A. Tweedie on ‘Sound and Fury’: A Poem by Susan Jarvis BryantMay 23, 2025

    And to think I was recently critiqued as being overly alliteral! Susan, you are never less than entertaining. And to…

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