Okay, so I took a poetry workshop here at OSU last quarter. It got me on a decent little roll (pumpernickel!) so I signed up for the one-month intensive workshop led by one of the senior profs in the department.
And so for our second assignment, she gives us the option of turning in a piece of blank verse, or tackling a sestina.
I was still feeling a bit like a n00b for completely and utterly failing to get a decent sonnet written last quarter, so I was thinking, "Vamos! Mi verso es fuerte!" or anyhow that's what I might have thought if I knew any Spanish.
So I got a first draft of a sestina done in a couple of hours. No sweat, I'm thinking.
And then I keep looking at it. And it keeps bugging me. And I keep messing with it.
So last night I was crouched on the corner of the bed going over it with a red pen and Braunbeck said "What the heck are you doing over there?"
I was probably rocking and muttering "Preciousss ... meter not quite right ... voice not quite right ... Precious needs more internal rhymeses yessss ...."
And last night I dreamed of freaking sestinas. Cenobites showed up to help me with my scansion. Yes, it's an improvement over the hospital nightmares I've been having, but still ....
Sestinas are
puzzles. And actually, I've been finding it helpful to think of
poetry in general as a form of
cryptography.