The Six-Stanza Sestina

The sestina, which originated in France, is an unrhymed form of poetry.  The poem is six stanzas long with each stanza containing six lines; a three line envoy completes the poem.  Just as every line of a pantoum is repeated later in the poem, the final word of each line of a sestina is repeated later in the poem.  Once again, patterning comes into play.  Here is the pattern of the words in a sestina:

123456

615243

364125

532614

451362

246531

(62) (14) (53)

John Ashbery's Farm Implements and Rutabagas in a Landscape, published in 1966, is an example of a sestina (http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/177258).  

The first of the undecoded messages read:  "Popeye sits in thunder,

Unthought of from that shoebox of an apartment,

From livid curtain's hue, a tangram emerges:  a country."

Meanwhile the Sea Hag was relaxing on a green couch:  "How pleasant

To spend one's vacation en la casa de Popeye," she scratched

Her cleft chin's solitary hair.  She remembered spinach."

And was going to ask Wimpy if he had bought any spinach

"My love," he intercepted, "the plains are decked out in thunder

Today and it shall be as you wish." He scratched 

The part of his head under his hat.  The apartment

Seemed to grow smaller.  "But what if no pleasant 

Inspiration plunge us now to the stars?  For this is my country."

Suddenly they remembered how it was cheaper in the country.

Wimpy was thoughtfully cutting open a number two can of spinach

When the door opened and Swee'pea crept in.  "How pleasant!"

But Swee'pea looked morose.  A note was pinned to his bib.  "Thunder

And tears are unveiling," it read.  "Henceforth shall Popeye's apartment

Be but remembered space, toxic but salubrious, whole or scratched."

Olive came hurtling through the window; it's geraniums

Scratched her long thigh.  "I have news!" she gasped.  "Popeye, as you know, forced to flee the

country

One musty gusty evening by schemes of his wizened duplicate father, jealous of 

the apartment

And all that it contains, myself and spinach

In particular, heaves bolts of loving thunder

At his own astonished becoming, rupturing the pleasant.

Arpeggio of our years. No more shall pleasant

Rays of the sun refresh your sense of growing old, nor the scratched

Tree trunks and mossy foliage, only immaculate darkness and thunder."

She grabbed Swee'pea.  "I'm taking the brat to the country."

"But you can't do that.  He hasn't even finished his spinach,"

Urged the Sea Hag looking fearfully around the apartment.

But Olive was already out of earshot.  Now the apartment

Succumbed to a strange new hush.  "Actually, it's quite pleasant

Here," thought the Sea Hag.  "If this is all we need fear from spinach

Then I don't mind so much. Perhaps we could invite Alice the Goon over" -- she scratched

One dug pensively -- "but Wimpy is such a country 

Bumpkin, always burping like that."  Minute at first, the thunder

Soon filled the apartment. It was domestic thunder

The colour of spinach. Popeye chuckled and scratched

His balls.  It sure was pleasant to spend a day in the country."

The Complaint of Lisa, by Algernon Charles Swinburne, is a double sestina (http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/174548).

http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/a_f/ashbery/images/popeye1.jpg