January Poem: Sestina

For this swap you will write one poem following the sestina form and send it to your partner.

History and instructions can be found at: http://m.poets.org/poetsorg/text/poetic-form-sestina

According to the Academy of American Poets;

"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:

1. ABCDEF
2. FAEBDC
3. CFDABE
4. ECBFAD
5. DEACFB
6. BDFECA
7. (envoi)(tercet) BE. DC. FA.

The envoi, a tercet, must contain two of the repeated words per line.

This is meant to be a little labor intensive so I've made it a type 3. Let's try something cool together! Can be handwritten or typed. Just needs to be a poem you wrote.

Also, this article looks helpful:

http://m.wikihow.com/Write-a-Sestina