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2006-12-12 - 11:54 p.m. Nya said the poem I wrote for her birthday last year was kind of a half-assed effort, with its lame AAAA rhyme scheme. She challenged me to use a far more difficult form this year: the sestina. I didn�t know anything about sestinas and I gamely agreed. Ouch. It turns out the sestina is probably the hardest type of poem to write. It involves using a set of six words at the end of lines (not necessarily the end of thoughts) in a different order in each of six stanzas and a closing three-line verse. Often, the meter is iambic pentameter and I�ve used that here. It was really hard. I certainly didn�t bring any message or underlying theme across. It�s such a constrained form; I really felt like I was just fulfilling a grammar exercise, straining to fit words together to make it to the next mandatory end-word. If you can transcend these boundaries and get a sentiment across, you are a better poet than I (actually, you�re probably a better poet than I anyway). I�m told that a sign of a good sestina is that when it�s read aloud, listeners don�t notice that the same six words are repeated over and over. I think, in my case, I�d be lucky if listeners don�t mind that it�s tortured word salad. Anyway, here it is: If you had known us years ago you�d laugh with her around; her humor and her fun or poor or worse in your behavior. Fair It thrills that her encouragement inspires to do this always. She�s so fucking smart when we were kids. Never do we look back Now let me go back home, where she inspires I see now that I used �fair� for �fare� in the third stanza. Would that that were the only problem� � 2006 Geoff Gladstone
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