Week 4
In which we finish the first stanza, and I make things needlessly complicated for myself
Welcome to The Public Domain Poetry Project where we deconstruct an older poem by using each line (one per week) as a jumping off point for a brand new poem. Participants are encouraged to share their poems in the comments below, or to leave us a link so we can read them elsewhere. If this sounds like fun to you, please consider subscribing for free so you don’t miss next week’s prompt. Thanks for visiting!
We’ve made it to week four and to the end of the first stanza of Edna St. Vincent Millay’s poem, “Travel.” This week’s line didn’t spark anything particular for me so I began casting about for some sort of structure upon which to hang my poem attempt. Because I have a fondness for closed forms, I thought “well, what about a sestina?” After all, the line is constructed of six words.
For those of you who have not yet been introduced to the sestina, here’s a little back story. A sestina is a complex form composed of an intricate series of repeated endlines over the course of six stanzas, followed by an envoi, which is a final three-line stanza that incorporates all six repeated words. A sestina repeats the ending words of each line in the first stanza in a different order in each following stanza. Sounds tricky, right? It is. But it also can be fun.
When writing sestinas in the past I’ve chosen my end words mostly at random, typed them up in the correct order over six stanzas and then written each line up to the end word. It becomes a kind of puzzle, maddening at times, but also fun. It’s true it sometimes feels like shoehorning words into a needlessly complex format, but I like a challenge.
I knew I didn’t have time to write a complete sestina this week, but I thought I could manage three stanzas plus the envoi. Sort of a demi-sestina.
Please Note: You do not have to attempt a sestina of any length. But if you’re interested in a general sort of way, here’s a link to a post from last year:
And here’s a link to a second sestina I wrote after I committed to doing so in an optimistic moment, a moment I rued afterward:
However you tackle your poem attempt, remember, no rules. Mix up the words, write about what they make you think of, without actually using them at all. Whatever works to spark your poem attempt. No sestina required!
Here is our line for this week, followed by my attempt at a demi-sestina.
But I hear its whistle shrieking
Winter Wind
Outside I hear
the wind shrieking
breathing in and out, its
inhale plucking at windowpanes but
it is the exhale I love; I
listen only to the whistle
that circles the treetops, a whistle
sung clear and long, like that birdcall we hear
in the summer high above us, and I
close my eyes to the shrieking
limbs and see the sky, but
not the icy one of today, its
fragile, milky blue, its
thumb-smeared clouds. The whistle
is now the merlin behind my eyelids, but
a tiny speck in the bowl of blue, and we hear
its mate calling back, and the crows shrieking
as we sit among the flowers, smelling the sea, you and I
The brittle cold has a voice I hear
but in the brutal shrieking, just below the gale,
its whispered sigh is the whistle of spring
For those of you keeping track, here are our first four lines, grouped as they are in Millay’s poem:
The railroad track is miles away,
And the day is loud with voices speaking,
Yet there isn't a train goes by all day
But I hear its whistle shrieking.
If you’re enjoying these prompts you might like to also participate in The February Poetry Adventure, starting soon!
Happy writing, everyone. See you in the comments!
I salute you, Tara. Even part of a sestina is a crazy amount of work. Yours is so lovely (my favorite phrase: "thumb-smeared clouds"). I wrote mine before I read yours so I wouldn't be too influenced, but we both went with wind whistling :).
I went with loosely using the words in Millay's line as the start of each line in stanza one, and then the end of each line in stanza two (Golden Shovel style).
Young love
.
Butter slides down each crevice of the English muffin.
It’s tasteless, the bread, but the structure is impeccable.
Here, it’s often just us for an hour or two after school.
It’s a chance to make out, to eat snacks, to play Cat Stevens:
whistle of the high notes rising in the gray afternoon,
shrieking “All the times that I cried,
.
keeping all the things I knew inside.” We’re young, but
the anguish hits as hard as the harmony. Eyes
closed, leaning against the side of his bed, we hear
what it must be like to grieve, to change. It’s
easier for us to imagine the end, with the whistle
of wind curling around his house, shrieking.
Your demi-sestina is lovely. I love the motion here from the shrieking of the wind to the memory of the sweet sighs of spring. and the inhale and exhale against the window.
It's definitely the time of year for wind howling in the trees. Not knowing where the Millay poem was going and not having seen your prompt, I had already written verses in the early morning hours about the howling and moaning of the wind around the chapel at midnight.
Also, for days I've been trying to find language to describe the sound of the gusting wind that I've been hearing around my house which is not howling or moaning or shrieking, but is still very loud. Rush isn't strong enough to convey the power of the sound and comparing it to planes and trains just won't do, though that's the closest equivalent. It's a puzzle that I can't quite put down.
Anyway, now it's going to be a puzzler what to do with the Millay because I want to do wind, but I've already said what I think I can say on that score.