UGP+Proposal

Name: Sestina

Why Interested:

I have dabbled in poetry before, usually for class assignments, but it has always interested me. I have been proud of the very few poems that I have written in the past, and would like to further explore the genre. I took a poetry class last spring, and one of the first types of poetry that we studied was the sestina. I chose the sestina because it has a distinct pattern that can be challenging, but it is not too limited by rhyme scheme. I have also never attempted to write anything like a sestina before.

What you know about the genre:

The sestina is a 39-line poem with six stanzas of six lines each, followed by an envoi of three lines. The words that end each line of the first stanza are used as line endings in each of the following stanzas, rotated in a set pattern:

stanza 1 : 123456

stanza 2 : 615243

stanza 3 : 364125

stanza 4 : 532614

stanza 5 : 451362

stanza 6 : 246531

==I 've always wanted to write one of these myself. The formula potentially gets in the way of saying anything intelligent, but I've read some that really inspire me. Try to read a good assortment of these. Make sure many of them are contemporary. Looking forward to seeing these. ==