Poetry Challenge: Introducing the Sestet
A sestet is a poetical form developed by Petrarch, who is more ancient than even me. A sestet is made up of two verses, each six lines long. Sestets may have different rhyming pattern, but have varying rhythms. They can either be free verse (with no rhythmic pattern or set variation of stressed and unstressed syllables, or in iambic pentameter).
The two most common rhyming schemes
were a/b/c/a/b/c for the first stanza and a/b/c/c/b/a for the second stanza, or
a/b/a/b/a/b for both stanzas. One variant rhyming scheme was a/b/a/b/c/c/.
Shakespeare was known to use sestets in
his work.
An example of a sestet is below.
The Ice Queen
From
high up in the mountains tall
The
ravening ice queen comes
Her
voice echoing, cracks bone like ice
Makes
our strongest towers fall
Our
dead will rise, and our hearts grow numb
And
beneath her feet we flail, fleeing her like mice.
Our
heroes are long gone, either dead or flown
Our
warriors are shattered, their life-blood spent
Our
people run; nowhere to hide
the
undead growing like a tide
lapping
over buildings, bodies broke and bent
and
over all the ice queen rules; souls and spirits for her throne
You can find out more about how to
write sestets from the following sites:
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