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 words that cycle throughout the poem in a strict pattern. At the end, all six words appear again in t...
Source: wordswithoutborders.org