So What Is a Sestina Anyway?

I started blogging because I needed a place on the web where I could post new poetry written from writing prompts offered from the cyber space group Poem (or JustOnePoem, as it's called on Carolee and Jill's blog). Of course, I'm an eclectic writer so this is about more than poetry. But today is "posting day" for our first writings based on our group's first poem-prompt(s), which happened to be "Delta Flight 659: to Sean Penn" by Denise Duhamel. It's a sestina, a form in which I'd never written. In fact, I generally write in what I guess is called an "open form" since it offers more freedom (I am assuming, based on its definition, that "free verse" is an open form). Mind you, we were not directed to write in any particular format-- just to let something about the poem become a writing prompt for us. I happened to like the challenge of adhering to a form yet letting it allow me to voice whatever I needed to say. In fact, two poems came to me during our "writing week"-- my Voice had a few things to say!

At the International Women's Writing Guild conference at Skidmore College (Saratoga Springs, NY), writer/artist Jan Lawry has led a workshop for several years. Even though there's a multitude of workshop options, I try to drop in on at least one of her six sessions because she always offers something that tweaks my Muse into action. A few years ago her prompts were actual poems by both other writers and of her own. Like JustOneWriter, she suggested we find our prompts in the poems offered-- including the possibility of using the same form, or format, as the author. I found this "spin-off" idea not only helpful but inspiring. I didn't always attempt to follow the same structure but when I did, something seemed to magically flow onto the paper (maybe not in perfect shape, but later to be honed into a final piece).

Before I include the two poems into this blog entry (and I'd like your feedback on them, if you so desire to click onto Comments below and offer it), let me first recommend a book in case you're inclined to try your hand at a specific poetic form. Once I'd read Duhamel's Sean Penn piece, I consulted The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms by Mark Strand and Eavan Boland. It gave me the basic structure of the sestina, some history of the form, its contemporary context and plenty of examples. I highly recommend that, if you're curious about other poetry formats too, such as the villanelle, the sonnet, the pantoum, or the ballad, you check this volume out.

And now, my new poems. Duhamel's poem, in addition to urging me to create a sestina, also prompted me to write a poem addressed to a celebrity. I'd recently viewed the film "The Great Debaters" and was moved by the true story of the courage of this group of young African-American college students who dared to debate issues that, in their time and place (Texas, 1930s), could have gotten them lynched. It helped that Denzel Washington is a star that I admire. Having lived through the 60s and walked in a few local equal rights/anti-war marches, this was a no-brainer as to why I'd choose the topic-- but how to put it into a poem? I discovered that the form served me well, although I didn't follow the specific pattern of words within each stanza to the letter. [Note that I've included a picture from those days, a local march, me & my friend Roy!]


PSEUDO-Sestina:
After Viewing The Great Debaters
by Marilyn Zembo Day

What are we left with, Denzel Washington,
when the music stops and dancers
depart, hopes dashed against white-washed wall,
strung-out children setting a place
for freedom at a skewered table,
imagining Martin, Malcolm… waiting

for Barack? If it doesn’t feel like dancing,
Denzel, if dreams cloud the wait-list,
which hopes then get forever tabled
while corruption pervades Washington?
Opposing agendas from wall-eyed
senators hinder, delay replacement

of archaic laws etched on placemats
from Greensboro, where obedient waitstaff
balked at Langston’s crumbling wall,
legal feet accustomed to a slow-dance
of separation, their guts awash
with the bounty of rancid tablefare.

Picture a traditional southern tableau:
straight-backed Negro servant placing
the evening meal before George Washington,
this man who would not be king, awaiting
the two-step of master-slave dinner-dance.
I ponder the miracle of an image wallpapered

onto a stone-and-cotton cultural wall,
blistered by the fires of a thousand washerwomen
who refused to take the bus, disrupting the waiting
hangman and dictating the tempo of the dance.
I could not envision an emerging replacement
yet I took a seat at the apocalyptic banquet table.

Tell me, I wanted to know, how you choreograph
a revolution. Assure me that the weight of irrefutable
truth will someday uproot complacency.
Denzel, I wanted peace. Handwashing
the feet of exhausted walkers, I, the wallflower,
indulged. I played the game of waiting.

But no one waits forever, Mr. Washington. Elijah’s
unattended place at the table requires attention.
I would’ve danced at the wall just as joyously for Hillary.



The idea for the second sestina came from a picture that my friend Leslie Neustadt sent to me via Facebook, an image of the "melancholy" Mary Magdalen painted by Renaissance painter Artemesia Gentleschi. Leslie knew of my interest in the Magdalen but she hadn't known I'd also become a "fan" of Gentleschi's work long ago-- back when my daughter Kristen did a college paper on this gifted artist. I had never heard of her at the time, but then who knew about women artists from that era? First of all, few women would've been given the opportunity to study art (Gentleschi's father was a painter)-- and then there's the fact that the winners write the history and the "winners" in those days were men (no comment on current status; suffice to say things are improving but we're not there yet).

I'd also read Susan Vreeland's novel, Artemesia, and loved it-- highly recommended. Vreeland takes what she researched on the artist and the times and imagines her circumstances: her art, her being raped and (being considered "property" of her father) having little recourse, and more. Between the novel and the painting of Mary Magdalen, the poem took form-- a sestina form, that is.


Paintboxes and Whores: Inspired by
Artemesia Gentileschi’s Mary Magdalen as Melancholy
by Marilyn Zembo Day

I am writing this poem, Artemisia, hidden
behind a cheap library desk, body
hunched into the absurdity of paintings
of women toting sacred oils, called whores,
and saintly men who thrust that sharp-
edged label upon them. A curve, a breast,

a body should not incite rage. Breast-thumping
testosterone motives aside, what hidden
agenda did he harbor, what sharp-
textured dream haunted his body
that he would violate, then call you whore?
Artemesia Gentileschi, is there enough red paint

on an artist’s pallet, in an entire paintbox,
to depict what lurks below your broken breast?
I am drawn to your golden Magdalen, whore
of your unforgiving Church, and I imagine you hide
behind your easel, building a mythic body
of work, slicing into your abuser with sharp

Biblical strokes, a woman’s sight sharpening,
narrowing, with each layer of paint.
No one said to you, “Love your body.”
Perhaps wrenched from a reluctant mother’s breast,
sensuous touch became something to hide
lest you emulate the first-century whore.

Once someone said we’re all whores
for something or someone. Whether sharp
or soft, sound still breaks into the silence. Hidden
messages, cryptic or decoded, continue to paint
the landscapes of women’s lives. To keep abreast
of terror wreaks another kind of trauma on the body.

Beyond the wall of my bookish enclave somebody
drones on about overdue fines, while I play word-whore,
seizing on every trick to lure the Muse to my breast.
My Critic batters every image, his voice shrill, sharp.
His laugh is a coiled rattlesnake. How could you paint,
with so many ghosts, so much to hide?

Somebody scraped the paint away, Artemesia:
Sharp-tongued whore, in the bosom of feminist truth,
like Mary, I invite you to come out of hiding.


YOUR TURN

1. Try writing a poem, or a letter, to a celebrity or famous person. Perhaps s/he's a particular favorite of yours. Maybe you want to tell her/him how s/he's inspired you, or that you like something s/he's done recently (a film, a song, lending support to a charity, etc.). How were you inspired by this person? Or was it the opposite-- did her/his actions anger or sadden you? What questions would you ask of this person?

2. What's your favorite movie? Or what film most recently evoked strong emotions for you, made you think about an issue or an era? Go with those emotions, thoughts-- let words draw out what needs to be expressed.

3. Either go to a museum or Google a favorite artist. Choose a painting and see what it evokes in you. Think about what the artist was seeing but also let it speak to your own history and feelings. Does something that's happening in the work of art bring back a memory, pinpoint a particular time or person in your life that you hadn't thought about in a while (or have been thinking about but not doing anything about it)? At a recent workshop I attended led by Therese Broderick, one of her prompts worked particularly well for me: start with "This reminds me of..." and, whenever the flow gets blocked, write the same starter-phrase again and keep going.

4. Are you a Baby Boomer? Do you remember the 60s? (Try not to start with the cliche, "If you remember the 60s, you weren't there.") Did you march? Were you a hippie? Did you go to 'Nam? Did you embrace Free Love? Were you a big Beatles or Stones fan? Write the memories. Maybe this becomes a book, or a chapbook-- to be published or not.

5. Write about courage. What is it? How does one find the courage to sit at a lunch counter when your actions could lead to death? How do you survive rape and become an accomplished artist? How do you get from wake-up to sleep-time each day? Give examples. Tell when you've been courageous (and yes, you have-- just acknowledge it).