Sestina

The sestina is a poetic form consisting of six stanzas of six lines of verse in English iambic.

Special features: The rhyming words of the first stanza are maintained by all stanzas in a fixed sequence - if you numbered the rhyming words of a verse with 1-6, they come in the following verse in this order: 6,1,5,2,4, 3; over the next verse contains these rhyming words then in the sequence 3,6,4,1,2,5. A three-line coda adjoins the six verses in which all rhyming words in the original order of the first stanza again recur (two per line). Other sequences are also possible. Coincidentally this is that the rhyming words are maintained in every disaster.

In sestina the word was plugged / sesta ie six, the sixth, which is referred to the structuring principle of this form of poetry. The peculiarity of the sestina as a form of poetry is that crop up in six six-line stanzas six alternating rhyme words. They are placed at the end of the hendecasyllable and are included in the final three-line coda again. Three of the six rhyming words are at the end of the hendecasyllable and the other three are within the line of verse.

As the inventor of this form applies Arnaut Daniel, a troubadour from Provence, the order in the Middle Ages and early humanism especially in Italy, including Dante Alighieri and Francesco Petrarca, imitators. This poem form probably originated in the Provençal poetry. Guido Bezzola presumed to be attributed to Arnaut Daniel.

In the 14th century, Petrarch uses in his poetry collection Rerum Vulgarium Fragmenta or Rime, which was compiled over a period of several decades and changed again and again, the sestina poem form.

German representatives

Martin Opitz, Andreas Gryphius, Ludwig Uhland, Friedrich Rückert, Oskar Pastior. Other poets Luís de Camões, Ezra Pound, Rudyard Kipling, WH Auden, Joan Brossa, John Ashbery.

Example:

• Lyrical form