We have moved!

This blog is no longer actively updated. You can now find us at http://poetscollective.org/poetryforms/.

Wednesday, January 8, 2014

Newman Sestina

The Newman sestina is a standard Sestina (See Here) with only the following added requirement:  Each of the six keywords Must Be an anagram of one another.

Newman sestina
This is a standard (unrhymed) sestina in which all the keywords are anagrams of one another. I was challenged to write such a thing by one of my son's school friends. Just to prove it can be done: 
Rambling in Tresco

A Scilly sestina
Last Wednesday there were questions in the Cortes
From Miguel Martinez, MP and coster,
Concerning an endangered fowl, the scoter,
Much traded in the thriving private sector,
Delicious roasted in a bacon corset,
A dish so prized it merits an armed escort.
Martinez left for home in his Ford Escort.
Alas, he’ll speak no more before the Cortes,
For Semtex slyly planted in his corset
Was detonated by another coster
With interests in the wildfowl trading sector,
A specialist in ptarmigan and scoter.
What virtue, to lay down one’s life for scoter!
May choirs of angels strum their harps and escort
This hero straight to heaven’s swishest sector!
Meanwhile, his bill’s in trouble in the Cortes -
No sponsor since we lost our gallant coster;
Debating time’s as tight as any corset.
“The currency regime we call the corset
Is more important far than any scoter.”
So says the Chancellor. But wait! Our coster
Has friends who know some girls who sometimes escort
The Chancellor when he’s not in the Cortes,
Who work in, shall we say, the private sector
And also in the Chancellor’s privates sector,
And wear the most suggestive style of corset.
A scandal! And the Chancellor quits the Cortes
Thus leaving ample time to save the scoter.
Relief, my ducks, as into law they escort
The bill so ably drafted by the coster.
So honour be to Martinez the coster
Great benefactor of the wildfowl sector!
For thanks to him birds get an Air Force escort.
(It’s cheaper than the monetary corset).
His name shall be the toast of every scoter.
Right wondrous are the doings of the Cortes!
Now like stout Cortes in the Darien sector,
I marvel at the coster and the corset,
And at the scoter flying with their escort.

Manifold magazine held a competition for poems in this ridiculous form, which the editor named the Newman sestina in my honour.

© Bob Newman 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007. All rights reserved


My thanks always to Bob Newman for his wonderful resource.


Visual Template



No comments:

Post a Comment