The first time I wrote a sestina, it was a matter of pride. I was a poet, but I didn’t particularly like writing in form.

One day my twelve-year-old daughter sneaked my Norton Anthology, The Making of a Poem. Within a few days, she had experimented with writing sonnets, villanelles, pantoums, and… sestinas. Of course I was proud. But not just about her poem. I admit, I felt challenged. Was I going to let my twelve-year-old write sestinas without trying them myself?

I figured if I was going to try the form out, I might as well start in Pittsburgh. The city certainly offered a lot of sights on a Saturday morning. It seemed perfect for the rolling form of this 39-line poem (6 stanzas of 6 lines each, followed by a wrap-up 3-line stanza; the end words of the first stanza repeat throughout the entire poem, according to a set pattern).

The sestina, like a song, helps us say what we want to say without really saying it; because it’s almost impossible to tell a story in a sestina, we tell our deep impressions and emotions instead. These emotions build and build through the repetitions of the end words, and we’re left holding something that feels like it might not be words at all, but perhaps just the whispering wind or a double rainbow.

Starting in July, at Every Day Poems, we’ll be exploring sestinas. And we’re really excited about some of the upcoming featured poets, including David Lehman of The Best American Poetry and James Cummins, Curator of the Elliston Poetry Collection. We also hope that you’ll try a sestina on for size. Even if you do it just as a matter of pride.

Here’s the basic pattern. The first 6 stanzas are each 6 lines. End words repeat according to the letter order below:

1. ABCDEF
2. FAEBDC
3. CFDABE
4. ECBFAD
5. DEACFB
6. BDFECA

7. last stanza, 3 lines (first repetition can go around the middle of the line, last at the end):
B-E
D-C
F-A

Post by L.L. Barkat. Visit L.L. at Seedlings in Stone, for more on writing, poetry, art and life.
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Further Resources, for Teachers or Writer’s Groups:

Poetic Form: Sestina
Writing a Sestina
Subscribe to Every Day Poems— Read a poem a day, become a better poet. In July we’ll be exploring sestinas.

In May, we reviewed Kingdom Come: Poems by John Estes here at TweetSpeak. He’s a fine poet, and we’re rather enthusiastic about his new collection.

John is doing a reading tour. If you happen to be in Colorado, Kansas or Nebraska, you might have an opportunity to hear him read from Kingdom Comes.

Here’s the schedule:

Estes Park, Colorado
with Matthew Cooperman and Aby Kaupang
Location: Estes Valley Library
Sponsored by Macdonald Books
Monday, June 27
7 p.m.

Leadville, Colorado
St. George Episcopal Concert Series
Tuesday, June 28
7 p.m.
Pages Bookshop
with Japanese Tea Service!

Newton, Kansas
Thursday, June 30
7 p.m.
The Bookworm

Omaha, Nebraska
Friday, July 1
6 p.m.

We checked on availability at Amazon, and it says “shipping in 2-4 weeks.” You can also order it from the publisher, C&R Press; through Small Press Distribution; or directly from John’s website.
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Have you heard the news? Books & Culture is doing poetry with the public. Their very first community poetry prompt is here.

I took up the challenge to cultivate, with a nod to France in both the title and the sestina form (We’ll be exploring sestinas more in July, both here at Tweetspeak and at Every Day Poems. They’re fun once you get the hang of them. :) )

Petit a Petit L’Oiseaux Fait Son Nid

Little by little, they say,
the bird makes its nest.
I have been making mine
in silvered hemlocks, time
after time; today I used a red
thread I found near the garden.

I used to dream of living in a garden,
listening to words white orchids say
to emerald hummingbirds, red-
throated, stealing gold for nests
the size of women’s thimbles, time
beating between breaths, a rhythm mine

could never find trapped, as in a mine
long hollowed, tapped black garden
that metamorphosed over time,
caught sounds of earth-on-earth say,
Come bed yourself on rock-hard nest,
turn death to sapphire, diamond, ruby red.

Rumor spreads: inside the earth is red,
molten, thrusting gold like mine
into the sun, into evening’s nest
that sits above an empty garden
where orchids do not say
it is time

it is time
to ravel rays from ravished dreams, red
and unremembered; it is time to say
what is yours and what is mine
it is time to turn the garden
into earth, find fool’s gold for a nest.

I have been making such a nest,
little by little, time after time,
I have been dreaming near a garden
in threads of memories, ruby red.
I have been claiming what is mine
and inviting you to say

you want the nest, the gold turning red,
the time we knew was mine,
the garden waiting, for what you have to say.

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Post by L.L. Barkat. Visit L.L. at Seedlings in Stone, for more on writing, poetry, art and life.
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Subscribe to Every Day Poems— read a poem a day with us, become a better poet or teach others to become better poets.

Below are three additional poems from the recent Twitter poetry party. All of the prompts came from Neruda’s Memoirs: Poems by Maureen Doallas.

By @mmerubies, @lauraboggess, @llbarkat, @loveLifeLitGod, @Dancinbutterfly, @doallas and @jejpoet. Edited by @gyoung9751

The line held too taut

The line snaps
because I hold it too tight;
life’s reel turns back
and loops as it did
the day we said goodbye.
Pieces break off, shatter; they
get lost along the way, not
to be found until year later
when I glue them together
to make a blue vase.
Sometimes they can
never be found again.

The mermaid breathes

Like a mermaid, she is neither this
nor that, only half-become,
of two natures warring, in need
of both water and air. If she
could breathe under water, like
a silver fish or a mermaid,
would she need no other elixir?

But her need for air reels her in,
like a pulley taut, back to her humanity,
and to his; she carries too a thread
sewing the silver fish into necklaces
and wings, reeling in the thread;
turning and dipping like fins all
out of breath for her lover.

Does she wait for the mermaids,
the silver fish, the night pulled taut?
Somehow she learns to breathe.
Satisfied she turns:
You’ll learn, she says,
to let your lover go
to breathe upon the hills.

And the breaths will knock
at the broom tree, tie it in circles
against the falling night,
a passing touch, like an elixir
from a Chinese jar,
each breath a vapor
disappearing in the tide.

Give me your fins, she says.
You cannot breathe like that,
on dry ground. Give up your fins,
and I will hand you my wings,
I will restore what’s lost
with lover’s passing
if you will only leave me alone.

The line pulled taut again

Nothing is lost;
it just reloops
as life’s reel
has a way
of continuously
starting over
but in doing so
new twists and
turns are added.
Reel in the thread,
pull it taut,
make of it
circles tying
heart to heart.

And I laugh
while it spirals,
and the circles
fill my eyes
until I look
drastic
cartoon-crazy
unhinged and
vacant.
I skim the
surface of
love’s voice,
calling.

Lavender-Grey

I looked into light,
and I found color
where grey was.

Does light take grey
and warm it up with color,
like singers wake vocal chords
before the song?

Is every song grey
warmed over to lavender?

And if life is a song,
is dull life lavender
when the sun shines in?

This feature of Kelly Sauer’s Lavender-Grey is part of the collaborative color writing and photo project hosted by TheHighCalling (see Claire’s Royal Colour Watch) and Tweetspeak’s Cataloging the Color of Your World.

All Random Acts of Poetry Participants

Violet’s Yellow
Annell’s The Color Blue (To read this poem, click the link and scroll to find it in the comment box.)
Gen’s Yellow
Karin’s Cataloging Green
Kelly’s Lavender-Grey
L.L.’s The Hunt
Marcus’s Psalm 2.0
Maureen’s Blue Riffs
Monica’s Level-Headed Red
Sandra’s This Orange Day

All PhotoPlay Participants

Shelbi Lynn: Orange & Pink
Mark: Blue
Charity: Red
Judy: White
Bill: Red
Violet: Yellow
Marcus: Green
Cindee: Blue
Jenny: Pink
Monica: Red
Kelly: Lavender
Tim: Green
Tina: Purple
LL: Red
Patricia: Green
Tricia: Pink
Nancy: Red
Susan: Orange
Patricia: Blue
Dan: Pink
Sandra: Orange
Esther: Blue
Gen: Yellow
Claire: White
mom2six: Blush

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Post by L.L. Barkat. Visit L.L. at Seedlings in Stone, for more on writing, poetry, art and life.
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Subscribe to Every Day Poems— read a poem a day with us, become a better poet or teach others to become better poets.

We have three more poems from the recent Twitter poetry party. All the prompts were taken from Neruda’s Memoirs: Poems by Maureen Doallas.

By @mmerubies, @Dancinbutterfly, @LoveLifeLitGod, @llbarkat, @doallas, @lauraboggess and @jejpoet. Edited by @gyoung9751.

Pure Water Pulled

Pure water pulled
up from the dark
tomb of earth
turns to crystal
under the sun,
settles to azure
when poured
into this vase.
Accidental water
pours from the jar
blue like the hollow
echo of a new-hewn
tomb.
I stand in the ocean
and the waves
overtake me.

Silver Fish

Remove ocean’s
scrim,
let silver fish
like lanterns
light the way.
And on the hills
waves of silver fish
overtake me.
Water is air
to the silver fish,
but death to me,
lingering long.

Mermaids fair,
overtake me,
locks of roses
making wake.
And the mermaids,
they too swim
the hills, their
hearts unsteady
while they wait
for dreams to unfold,
their hearts worried
thin by worry.

Stella

Of all my dead relatives,
why is it usually Stella
who shows up in my brain?
Stella who screamed,
who made her son feel
accidental, her happiness
swimming past her like
silver fish, slipper scales,
useless in the hills. She is
sweeping the dirt yard
of my mind, Stella with her
wooden broom, a witch.

I keep waiting, Stella,
star from before my birth,
I keep waiting on you.
Stella, your name means star,
but you put the lanterns out
and hid behind Jehovah’s name.
You carry a lantern and the fish
like stars of roses,
waking me to another
dream, thin as an element we
cannot see, a thread that breaks,
the line separating you from me.

And I loved her.

Over at The High Calling, we’re hunting for color. I already started, and I found a few things to put in my red basket.

Then I thought, what if we went hunting for color poems too? Claire agreed and so we decided we’ll feature two participants each (and link to all). That means one photo and one poem will get featured at The High Calling and another photo and poem will get featured here. As usual, every one will get links. Post your offering by this Wednesday, the 15th, on the T. S. Poetry Press Wall. (Yes, Megan, I know ;-)

It also seems like a good time to try out the catalog technique we’ve been exploring at Every Day Poems. In fact, if anyone writes a catalog color poem that really illustrates the technique nicely, that could be another possible place to get featured.

Okay, here’s my try…

The Hunt

I went searching for red,
red on the teapot tree,
red in my dreams, red on
the heart on the edge
of my sleeves. I found it
in baskets, in kettles,
on cloth, on an old rusty
farm tool you wore
to its end
and left in a field
where I found it
one day, when the sky
bled to white, like the words
you kept leaving unsaid.

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Post by L.L. Barkat. Visit L.L. at Seedlings in Stone, for more on writing, poetry, art and life. This post is also being shared with One Stop Poetry.
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Subscribe to Every Day Poems— read a poem a day with us, become a better poet or teach others to become better poets.

Poems are everywhere, free for the taking. Yet they are worth so much. I was reminded of this the other day, when an Every Day Poems subscriber contacted me to say, “I love this poem. It awakens places and people in me. Not yet discovered. Waiting.”

For those who participated in our 99¢ Writing Project, the biggest cost seemed to be time, permission to be curious, and a willingness to write about humble things. The poems were wonderful, and I had the darndest time choosing one for feature.

Because I’ve been considering the question of whether poetry is always words, I decided to feature Monica Sharman’s offering. Sandra Heska King’s was of a similar genre (be sure to check it out).

Priceless Correspondence

Now they come at four dimes
and four pennies apiece
in neat sheets, like pages
out of a history volume boasting
of our own, our own brush strokes
and space probes and man around the globe.

They come like syncopated
rhythms of modern bards’ music,
lively bits of conversation
between strings and brass brought
from a mix of New Orleans and Africa
and isles nearby, improvised and styled.

They come like a billboard
listing simple steps saying
how to save the earth and go green.

They come separated by wavy lines
to simulate the old perforations,
like a monument remembering
the way they used to be.

They always come in Love.
I’ve received them that way
and that is how I send them,
a letter on paper, ink from a pen
guided by my own hand
and stamped.

All RAP Participants

Monica’s Priceless Correspondence
Violet’s Regular Please (will also be featured in Every Day Poems :) )
Megan’s 99¢ x 17 (in which she buys something dear to my heart :) )
Sandra’s Ode to Yogurt (in which she continues an inside Twitter joke about being cultured, and makes me laugh)
Heather’s 99¢ Poem (in which she makes me catch my breath)

The steady crescendo of cataloging, when done well, does not so much call attention to itself as it creates an inner sensation of power— like the waves of the sea ever-gathering towards shore, saying, “I am here, I was here yesterday, I will be here tomorrow.”

Listen, for instance to the catalog technique in Whitman’s Song of Myself…

Through me many long dumb voices,
Voices of the interminable generations of prisoners and slaves,
Voices of the diseas’d and despairing and of thieves and
dwarfs,
Voices of cycles of preparation and accretion…

As Hirsch notes, quoting Sacks along the way, “‘Repetition creates a sense of continuity, of an unbroken pattern such as one may oppose to the extreme discontinuity of death’…. reiterations are a creative response to psychological trauma.” (p.151, How to Read a Poem)

So there is something powerful and primal about repetition, from drumbeats to heartbeats to modern pop music (“Body, body,” (or is it “Party, party”?) Madonna repeats, almost like a prayer). Thus, for the person who thinks he has no need for poetry, cataloging becomes a question: are you sure about that? After all, good poetry feels an awful lot like “life-essence.”

This month at Every Day Poems, we’re exploring the catalog technique. June seems a good time to assert “life.” You could join us by writing your own catalog poems. Or just read along.

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Visit L.L. Barkat at Seedlings in Stone, for more on writing, poetry, art and life.
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Further Resources, for Teachers or Writer’s Groups:

How to Write a Catalog Poem
How to Write a Catalog Poem (Or Not)
Buy a year of Every Day Poems— read a poem a day with us, become a better poet or teach others to become better poets.

Last Thursday night, there was another gathering of the Tweetspeakers for a Twitter poetry party. This time, the prompts all came from Neruda’s Memoirs: Poems by Maureen Doallas, who was one of the tweetspeaking participants.

Below are the first three poems from the jam, edited by someone named the Poem Weaver. Actually, someone else (cough – L.L. Barkat – cough – cough) named me that, and I decided it was the best job title I’ve ever had.

Alice and the Chinese Jar

By @doallas, @llbarkat, @mmerubies and @jejpoet

To make the hours race
she put elixir into
the Chinese jar, precious
oil, a garden of Eden scent,
those swirls of liquid
in the clear vase,
blue liquid, dancing
bubbles, purple stars,
asters from behind
rusted cars.

Dancing blue
she thought of you
and the asters
and the scent of Eden.
Tide in and tide out,
she knocked the vase
and watched it splash.
She beat her fists
in the blue and screamed.
But no one heard.

When the liquid grew still,
she moved instead, dancing
around the waves, wishing
for quiet inside,
swirling;
silent.

When Rage is Silence

By @llbarkat, @mmerubies, @LoveLifeLitGod, @jejpoet and @doallas

The Ocean

The ocean
rages, begs for calm,
yet when a land is silent
as an empty vase
who rages, does anyone
rage?
And when the land breaks
from drought and shatters man,
what then of rage,
rage as stars might rave?

The Land

The land I traversed two days ago
was rich with dark black soil
and my roots were reaching
down to drink, when the silver car
drove me away and now the vines
are tearing at my flesh, begging me
to go, back home again,
home to secrets
home to stars and vines
and Mississippi lands.
But I cannot go back home again.
Will it be a home?
I am falsely anchored to Mississippi
lands, with husbands hands and
children feet, clawing and curbing me.

The Ocean

The water is my home.
Pay to sip it
pay to hold it
pay to be silent?
Will the Chinese jar
hold the silence
will it fit your lip
if you try to sip
the darkness inside?

Last Secrets of the Chinese Jar

By @mmerubies, @doallas, @llbarkat, @jejpoet, @LoveLifeLitGod and @lauraboggess

Curbing my hands, my feet,
curbing my ache for home,
for its last secrets ,
plantation dreams
and old twin oaks,
I chose my trap,
my mama bear paws eagerly
taking on the silver spikes
and begging him
to close in ranks.
He did.

Who can keep a secret
when our walls are flung
into the gulf
and the gulf cries
like the hollow jar,
elixir gone,
mixed long ago and spent?
Dark water still swallows tears
and dimples light at dawn.
silence might be darkness;
darkness, temptation’s ghosts,
names of the forgotten,
and remembered.

I see a piece
with a Chinese symbol.
I don’t know what it means.
And now I pop white pills
in the new dawn, hoping
to keep the demons at bay,
the demons born in eastern hills,
with names that whisper
in my nights:
Stella.
Victoria.
Mary Jane
and Willie V.

Subscribe to Every Day Poems— read a poem a day with us, become a better poet or teach others to become better poets.

The rules are simple because there aren’t any. Well, maybe one (the hashtag). The party lasts one hour. @tspoetry provides the prompt — an idea, a line of poetry, even a tabloid headline. You write a few lines of poetry in response to the prompt and then play off the other participants’ lines.

You work within the 140-character limit set by Twitter for all tweets — just make sure each tweet includes the hashtag — #tsptry. That way, we can find your contributions. It’s a good idea to follow @tspoetry and as many of the participants as possible (see Tweet Poet Friends in sidebar) — but @tspoetry is the critical one. (If you participate in a Twitter party and we forget to add you to our Tweet Poet Friends list, don’t be shy about asking us to add you! It gets busy around here, and sometimes a few details fall through the cracks. :))

The best way to make sure you include the hashtag and see everyone’s tweets as they are tweeted, is to come to our @tspoetry Tweetchat room.

After the Twitter Party concludes, we usually tweet around and congratulate one another. And tonight, if you are the first to guess the source of our prompts, you’ll win a free subscription for you or a friend, to Every Day Poems.

Most of the tweets from the Twitter Party will be assembled into larger Twitter poems. We’ll feature some on this blog, some in Every Day Poems, with the best lines singled out and identified by contributor. You’ll get credit and links as a co-author, too. As for royalties, don’t hold your breath. We’ll let you know if any show up! :)

Harry Potter Parody Illustration (“Harry Trotter”), by Sara B. Used with permission.