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My Brother at 3 A.M. by Natalie Diaz | Poetry Foundation

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He sat cross-legged, weeping on the steps

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The sestina is a complex, thirty-nine-line poem featuring the intricate repetition of end-words in six stanzas and an envoi.
Rules of the Sestina Form
The sestina follows a strict pattern of the repetition of the initial six end-words of the first stanza through the remaining five six-line stanzas, culminating in a three-line envoi. The lines may be of any length, though in its initial incarnation, the sestina followed a syllabic restriction. The form is as follows, where each numeral indicates the stanza position and the letters represent end-words:

The envoi, sometimes known as the tornada, must also include the remaining three end-words, BDF, in the course of the three lines so that all six recurring words appear in the final three lines. In place of a rhyme scheme, the sestina relies on end-word repetition to effect a sort of rhyme.
History of the Sestina Form
The sestina is attributed to Arnaut Daniel, the Provençal troubadour of the twelfth century. The name "troubadour" likely comes from trobar, which means "to invent or compose verse." The troubadours sang their verses accompanied by music and were quite competitive, each trying to top the next in wit, as well as complexity and difficulty of style.

Courtly love often was the theme of the troubadours, and this emphasis continued as the sestina migrated to Italy, where Dante and Petrarch practiced the form with great reverence for Daniel, who, as Petrarch said, was "the first among all others, great master of love."

Many twentieth-century poets have taken on the form, including Ezra Pound and John Ashbery. In the dramatic monologue " Sestina: Altaforte," Pound, in one of his many responses to his great influence, the Victorian poet Robert Browning, adopts the voice of troubadour-warlord Bertrans de Born. The poem is a tour-de-force in the praises of war as de Born, addressing Papiols, his court minstrel, laments that he "has no life save when the swords clash." This poem is a good example of the possibilities of end-word repetition, where, in expert hands, each recurrence changes in meaning, often very subtly. Note, too, the end-words Pound chose: "peace," "music," "clash," "opposing," "crimson," and "rejoicing." The words, while general enough to lend themselves to multiple meanings, are common enough that they also present Pound with the difficult task of making every instance fresh. Here are the first two stanzas (after a prefatory stanza which sets the scene):
I
Damn it all! all this our South stinks peace.
You whoreson dog, Papiols, come! Let's to music!
I have no life save when the swords clash.
But ah! when I see the standards gold, vair, purple,
opposing
And the broad fields beneath them turn crimson,
Then howl I my heart nigh mad with rejoicing.
II
In hot summer have I great rejoicing
When the tempests kill the earth's foul peace,
And the lightnings from black heav'n flash crimson,
And the fierce thunders roar me their music
And the winds shriek through the clouds mad, opposing,
And through all the riven skies God's swords clash.

Contrast Pound's sestina with Ashbery's " Farm Implements and Rutabagas in a Landscape, " a playful romp involving the cast of the Popeye cartoon world. Ashbery deftly remixes the end-word order to great comic effect (notice the surprise in each use of "scratched") while sketching a disturbing domestic pathos, resulting in a poem both funny and melancholic. The poem, a masterful instance of the sestina, manages to also poke fun at the obsessive form.

Other notable sestinas include "Mantis" by Louis Zukofsky; "Sestina" and "A Miracle for Breakfast" by Elizabeth Bishop; "Paysage Moralise" by W. H. Auden; "Toward Autumn" by Marilyn Hacker; and "Sestina: Bob" by Jonah Winter, which employs the name Bob for each end-word, to great comic effect. The web version of the literary magazine McSweeney's maintains
a repository of contemporary sestinas; indeed, the sestina is the only type of poem the site will consider for publication.

There have also been several variations of the sestina form, which usually expand or contract the length. Algernon Charles Swinburne 's "The Complaint of Lisa" is a double sestina, in which twelve end-words recur across twelve twelve-line stanzas, culminating in a six-line envoi. To top things off, Swinburne took the unusual step of rhyming the end-words.

Marie Ponsot invented the "tritina," a good example of the contraction of the sestina form. Here, three end-words repeat over three three-line stanzas that marvelously compress into a single line envoi, as in her poem "Living Room," where the end-words, "frame," "break," and "cold," bed down in the final line: "Framed, it's a wind-break. It averts the worst cold."
read more sestinas

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The sestina is a complex, thirty-nine-line poem featuring the intricate repetition of end-words in six stanzas and an envoi. Rules of the Sestina Form The sestina follows a strict pattern of the repetition of the initial six end-words of the first stanza through the remaining five six-line stanzas, culminating in a three-line envoi.

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You who are happy in a thousand homes,

Or overworked therein, to a dumb peace;

Whose souls are wholly centered in the life

Of that small group you personally love;

Who told you that you need not know or care

About the sin and sorrow of the world?

Do you believe the sorrow of the world

Does not concern you in your little homes? -

That you are licensed to avoid the care

And toil for human progress, human peace,

And the enlargement of our power of love

Until it covers every field of life?

The one first duty of all human life

Is to promote the progress of the world

In righteousness, in wisdom, truth and love;

And you ignore it, hidden in your homes,

Content to keep them in uncertain peace,

Content to leave all else without your care.

Yet you are mothers! And a mother's care

Is the first step toward friendly human life.

Life where all nations in untroubled peace

Unite to raise the standard of the world

And make the happiness we seek in homes

Spread everywhere in strong and fruitful love.

You are content to keep that mighty love

In its first steps forever; the crude care

Of animals for mate and young and homes,

Instead of pouring it abroad in life,

Its mighty current feeding all the world

Till every human child can grow in peace.

You cannot keep your small domestic peace

Your little pool of undeveloped love,

While the neglected, starved, unmothered world

Struggles and fights for lack of mother's care,

And its tempestuous, bitter, broken life

Beats in upon you in your selfish homes.

We all may have our homes in joy and peace

When woman's life, in its rich power of love

Is joined with man's to care for all the world.

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To The Indifferent Women by Charlotte Anna... | Poetry Foundation

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You who are happy in a thousand homes, Or overworked therein, to a dumb peace; Whose souls are wholly centered in the life Of that small group you personally love; Who told you that you need not know or care About the sin and sorrow of the world?

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Your hands have no more worth than tree stumps at harvest.

Don't sit on my porch while I make myself useful.

Braid secrets in scalps on summer days for my sisters.

Secure every strand of gossip with tight rubber bands of value.

What possessed you to ever grow your nails so long?

How can you have history without braids?

A black girl is happiest when rooted to the scalp are braids.

She dances with them whipping down her back like corn in winds of harvest.

Braiding forces our reunions to be like the shifts your mothers work, long.

I find that being surrounded by only your own is more useful.

Gives our mixed blood more value.

Solidifies your place with your race, with your sisters.

Your block is a layered cake of your sisters.

Force your lips quiet and sweet and they'll speak when they need to practice braids.

Your hair length is the only part of you that holds value.

The tallest crop is worshipped at harvest.

So many little hands in your head. You are finally useful.

Your hair is yours, your hair is theirs, your hair is, for a black girl, long.

Tender-headed ass won't last 'round here long.

Cut your nails and use your fists to protect yourself against your sisters.

Somehow mold those hands useful.

You hair won't get pulled in fights if they are in braids.

Beat out the weak parts of the crops during harvest.

When they are limp and without soul they have value.

If you won't braid or defend yourself what is your value?

Sitting on the porch until dark sweeps in needing to be invited, you'll be needing long.

When the crop is already used what is its worth after harvest?

You'll learn that you can't ever trust those quick to call themselves your sisters.

They yearn for the gold that is your braids.

You hold on your shoulders a coveted item that is useful.

Your presence will someday become useful.

One day the rest of your body will stagger under the weight of its value.

Until then, sit in silence in the front with your scalp on fire from the braids.

I promise you won't need anyone too long.

One day you will love yourself on your own, without the validation of sisters.

No longer a stump wailing for affection at harvest.

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A sestina for a black girl who does not know how to... | Poetry Magazine

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Your hands have no more worth than tree stumps at harvest. Don't sit on my porch while I make myself useful. Braid secrets in scalps on summer days for my sisters. Secure every strand of gossip with tight rubber bands of value. What possessed you to ever grow your nails so long?