Jannie Dresser started a poem a day internet class in January. Every day she sent out a prompt. I didn’t follow the prompts all of the time, as the ultimate goal of a prompt was to come up with a poem. Occasionally Jannie asked for a sonnet, or rispetto. When that happened I had no choice but to follow her instructions.
Fortunately the internet is full of information, and examples of structured verse are readily available. Still, the struggle was real and through this practice I realized what an art it is to write in a particular form. Limitations and rules force a person to be creative.
Well, none of my form poems turn out well but I have much more appreciation and respect for forms. Jannie is taking a break this month and a few of us in the class have taken up the responsibility to post a prompt. Last night’s was to write a sestina—a long poem of 39 lines. I found myself in a puzzled place, trying to fit the same six ending words to each line over and over. It was a long time before I emerged, a bit frazzled, with a poem that looked like a hipster in a historical costume.
I liked your sestina very much. I wrote one (I’ll send it to you) that turned out wrong–with an extra stanza. You can decide whether mine is of any value. But I liked yours–especially since it turned out with the correct number of stanzas. And I like the words you chose. Your sestina didn’t look at all like a hipster in a historical costume: more like a young woman wearing Moroccan clothes sipping kif in a colorful souk. (Perhaps–only perhaps–a soulless mate for the hipster in your hootchy kootchy, hemistitch history.)