Sympathetic Sybil is Write Out Loud's own Agony Aunt...

Dear Sympathetic Sybil

I am struggling trying to write a sestina. Should I try a villanelle instead or try to persevere with the original structure for my poem?

Yours

Anon

Dear Reader,

A lot of these complicated poetic forms were invented by the Ancien Régime (in France – where else?) who called themselves troubadours, thought of themselves as intellectual amoureux and ponced about with lutes, les luthes.

In those days they didn’t have rolling news or the internet so could only write about 3 things: Love, Death and The Countryside. Further, apart from rapports sexuels (shagging), they had nothing better to do than invent obscure poetic forms to impress each other. “Oh Arnaut, zat was soo good but listen to what I ‘ave eenvented…” So as time went on the forms got ever more compliqué until they disappeared up their own derrières.

And to be honnête that’s the best place for them.

However, for readers who fancy themselves as modern-day, lyrical tosseurs here’s how to write one:

A sestina consists of 6, six-line stanzas followed by a three-line tercet.

The same set of six words ends the lines of each of the six-line stanzas, but in a different order each time; if we number the first stanza's lines 123456, then the words ending the second stanza's lines appear in the order 615243, then 364125, then 532614, then 451362, and finally 246531.

Are you getting this? Bien sur! – it’s the least you can do when I took the trouble to copy it from Wikipedia.

These six words then appear in the tercet as well, with the tercet's first line usually containing 1 and 2, its second 3 and 4, and its third 5 and 6. Although inevitably these clever-clever posuers were not content with something this complex so there are endless other variations, which you will find on the internet if you are mad enough to look. Oh yes, and classic English sestinas are usually written in iambic pentameter.

 I think this is right but I was so overcome with ennui researching it I thought I had died and gone to a particularly awful part of hell – so, you pedants, don’t bother writing in with your pathetic corrections, Je ne regrette rien!

And as for you, my original correspondent, the answer is – allez off and write vers moderne.

Yours truly,

Sympathetic Sybil

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