On Sestinas and Literary Translation
On Sestinas and Literary Translation I encountered my first sestina in college, through a creative writing workshop centered on poetic form. For homework, we read the canonical examples, such as Elizabeth Bishop’s “Sestina” and John Ashbery’s “Farm Implements and Rutabagas in a Landscape.” We learned the rules of the form: the sestina comprises six stanzas of six lines each, followed by an envoi (or “tornada”) of three lines. The six lines of each main stanza end with specific w...
Source: wordswithoutborders.org