Poem draft - For Ed, Next Door

April is National Poetry Month so I’m using this as an opportunity to work on some poems a little bit every day. I’m sharing some of my drafts with paid subscribers. For the past few days, I’ve been tackling a sestina.

Poetic forms have always attracted me, and the sestina is a particular challenge I’ve never attempted. You’ll notice the end words of each line repeated each stanza, appearing in a different order. It’s a kind of puzzle, which is fun to try to figure out, but it also challenges my internalized idea that one should repeat words as little as possible in poem (save in the case of an intentional refrain.) Here, repetition without rhyme requires consideration. Each repeated word needs to be placed thoughtfully and the poem has to make sense - one can’t just throw the words in randomly and hope it works out.

The format looks like this if you number the end words of each line:

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 2) (1 4) (5 3)

(Yes, it’s sort of what would happen if a sudoku and a sonnet got together.)

Anyway, below is the draft of the sestina I’m working on, currently called For Ed, Next Door.

Thanks for reading. Hug someone you love today.

Xo,

Juliana