‘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...
‘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 15 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...
‘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...
‘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...
‘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...
