Sestina

The sestina took its name from the Italian word for “six,” the number at the core of the poem’s structure.

This usually unrhymed poem consists of six six-line stanzas and a three-line envoy, or a short concluding stanza, at the end. Each stanza repeats the end words of the lines of the first stanza, but in a different order. Then, the envoy uses those six words again, three in the middle of the lines and three in the end.

This highly complex form of poetry was invented by a 12th-century troubadour, and unlike the sonnet, the sestina’s strict structure has remained essentially unchanged, its complexity a tempting challenge for poets to tackle.

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