week 8 #2 critical

The joy of writing a Sestina!

I just wanted to spend time talking about the joy of writing a sestina...(not). These are difficult to do because it requires us to incorporate six endings of the same words into a poem. But you have to do so in a way where the poem still makes sense and appeals to the reader. Talking to my other classmates I learned that sestinas are not our favorite types of poem to write. Yes listening to the poems we had in class, I feel that we did a better job at writing it than we had thought. I have a lot of respect for the people that have mastered this form. It's not easy. Poets like Elizabeth Bishop, can write this poem in way where you forget about the reputation. Like Professor Park's say in class, don't let the form of the poem take control of what you want to say. Her sentences don't feel forced. They fit in the right place. This was my problem. In the beginning it was easy to have powerful sentences. But towards the end it became more difficult to not force the sentences. My words were Queen, quotes, fruits, friends, earth, and tiger. Fruits and quotes were the hardest to work with. Queen was easy though. So many things can work with queen. My favorite line in the poem was "A real queen is 'and I quote'" I felt I that used quote in a clever way because it was an actually quote. As far as me writing another sestina.... If i don't have to I probably won't. A sestina is one of those things that you can cross off your bucket list and and be grateful that you tried it.