A sestina is a 39-line poem composed of six 6-line stanzas and a final 3-line stanza (called the "envoi").
The end words of the lines in each of the first six stanzas are permutations of the same 6 words in an order determined by taking the end word of final line of the previous stanza, then the end word of the first line of the previous stanza, then the end word of the second-to-last line of the previous stanza, then the end word of the second line of the previous stanza, and so on. Probably easier to show that in a diagram:
The envoi is then built of three lines that each contain two of the six end words, also in a prescribed order. While not completely clear if there is a single established convention for the ordering of the words in the envoi, I have chosen to follow the order of (6,5), (2,4), (3,1).
I learned about sestinas from a workshop at the 2012 Columbia Scholastic Press Association Spring Convention.
In 2015, I had a desk job with lots of down time, so I gradually filled a notebook with sestinas.
In 2020, I started teaching myself HTML and have been working on this website since then.
1
2
3
4
5
6
6
1
5
2
4
3
3
6
4
1
2
5
5
3
2
6
1
4
4
5
1
3
6
2
2
4
6
5
3
1
6-5
2-4
3-1