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Posts tagged ‘sestina’

Poetic inspiration from our early days

As we celebrate National Poetry Month, we thought you might enjoy three poetry posts from the early days of our blog.

In An experiment in form: Channeling a beat poet, Carol writes about how she was inspired to write a sestina.

Write lyrically by reading poetry was inspired by a tip from author Cristina Garcia.

Poet or not, in Two exercises to help you write poetically, Garcia offers tips that enhance your writing.

An experiment in form: Channeling a beat poet

I brought a new poem to my writing group last week. They loved it. Said it was the best poem I’d written.  I was almost embarrassed at the accolades (notice I said “almost”).

The poem was different than the kind of poem I usually write. For one, it was longer—39 lines.  And, the lines themselves were longer than what I normally write.  Plus, it was a sestina (a poetic form of 39 lines with 6 stanzas of six lines each and a tercet of three lines at the end.  In a sestina, the end words of the first stanza are repeated in a certain order through the rest of the poem). Intriguing?  Yes. Easy to do well? Not so much.

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