sestina

The sestina is a highly structured form of poetry, invented by the Provençal troubadour Arnaut Daniel the late 12th century. It consists of thirty-nine lines; six six-line stanzas, usually ending with a triplet. There are no restrictions on line length, although, in English, the sestina is most commonly written in iambic pentameter or in decasyllabic meters.

In the five stanzas following the first one which sets it up; the same six words must end the six lines, in a strictly prescribed variation of order. The variation is this: if we number the six words that end the first stanza's lines as 123456, these same words will switch places in the following sequences-- 615243, 364125, 532614, 451362, and 246531. The six words are then included within the lines of the concluding triplet (also called the envoi or tornada), again in a prescribed order: the first line containing 2 & 5, the second line containing 4 & 3, and the final line containing 1 & 6.

However, there seem to be more variations on the order of the use of the key words in the final tercet. Jorge de Sena, a Portuguese poet, indicates that the first line contains words 1 & 2, the second words 3 & 4, and the final line words 5 & 6, in that order. The sestina by Philip Sidney, cited below, uses this order. Other sources specify 1 & 4; 2 & 5; 3 & 6. Sestina writers seem to have felt freer to alter this part of the pattern than the strict rotation and interchange of the end words in the six sestets.

The 12th century Provençal troubadour Arnaut Daniel is credited with having invented the sestina form. The oldest British example of the form is a double sestina, "You Goat-Herd Gods," written by Philip Sidney. Writers such as Dante, A. C. Swinburne, Rudyard Kipling, Ezra Pound, W. H. Auden and Elizabeth Bishop are all noted for having written sestinas of some fame.