P.Hill+UFG+Reflection


 * 1. What did you overlook about this genre before you began writing it? **

When I approached this genre I overlooked how limiting it could be because of the strict form. While I initially thought that some structure would make the overall making of the poem easier, the word constraint is what really limited me. I felt like I had so much more to say with my poems but couldn’t because I had to word the poems in way that made sense and flowed with my word choices. I found that I had an easier time when I picked the words before I started the poem, instead of writing the first stanza and then trying to make those words fit the rest of the poem. Sometimes I picked generic words, too, so I tried to vary them to a degree, and I also sought to use words that had different forms so I wasn’t so limited in my decision-making.

2. What mode of writing is most demanded by this genre?

This mode of writing lives and dies with free verse. If someone could come up with a way to make all of the end words rhyme and still give the poem meaning and flow, they are a better person than I, because I think the poem would be extremely superficial or a little jaunty. I think also I had a lot of difficulty making my poems anything but memoir-type poems that were more of a “stream of consciousness” than anything else. Many of these poems were very cathartic for me because I got to step back and look at points in my life that were very meaningful for me, but I don’t think that everything was necessarily as poetic as it should have been.

3. What conventions other than Standard Written English distinguish the genre?

This genre is most distinguished by its very repetitive nature, because it follows a strict pattern of repetitions; most importantly, the first line of each stanza begins with the last line of the previous one, which means that from one stanza to the next, the writer has to come up with a way to make the poem sound like it progresses, while using relatively some of the same language. I fell into the trap of repeating whole word phrases, instead of just the word, which I feared would become redundant. I think this form also depends heavily upon enjambement, because complete stanzas ending in the same cycle of words would be unbelievably challenging. A lot of the mentor texts that I liked best also used multiple verb tenses and word forms for the same words, so it added variety and a little bit of wordplay to a poetic form that can become banal.

4. Would a writer have a good reason to abuse any of these conventions of the genre? Which ones and why?

I definitely think that a writer could abuse the enjambement convention, because I definitely did! At times, I created one-word lines in order to continue a thought that may have contained more than one of my key words or to emphasize a particular word, but I may have gone overboard. Also, I relied heavily on words that had different forms (although I may have taken a little bit of liberty on some of them), like using edge as a noun and verb, and also using the adjective form “edgy.” I also used the verb and adjective forms of “driven.”

5. Other discoveries about this genre?

This genre is both liberating and frustrating. I found that it was easier for me to keep focus on the topic at hand because the poem refused to let me stray from my six key words (and in essence, the key topic of the poem). Like I said, this genre can be cathartic because when you pick a topic in your life to write about that makes you upset or passionate, you tend to really focus in on it, so sestinas give you an opportunity to really drive home a point that you may have been fixating on already. I also assumed that sestinas were long… A 39 line poem?! But I realized very quickly when my emotions started coming out and I had to follow such a strict pattern, there was so much more left unsaid, and then I wanted to use the envoi to catch up, so I had to be really careful to limit myself.