Sestina Generator

How to Write a Sestina

Start by choosing your six end words. This is the single most important decision you'll make, and it's where most people go wrong. Pick words that are too specific and you'll paint yourself into a corner by stanza three. Pick words that are too vague and the poem will feel limp. You want words with multiple meanings or uses. Words that can function as both noun and verb are gold. "Light," "leaves," "stone," "draw," "rest," "turn", these give you room to maneuver.

Once you've got your six words, write the first stanza in whatever order feels right: ABCDEF. Here's where the word pattern kicks in. Stanza two rearranges those end words to FAEBDC, and each subsequent stanza follows the same spiral logic. The envoi buries one end word mid-line and places another at the line's end, packing all six into a tight closing.

A common mistake is treating the repeated words as a burden instead of an engine. Don't just slot them in and move on. Let each return surprise you. If "leaves" meant tree foliage in stanza one, let it mean "departs" in stanza four. Another trap: writing six disconnected stanzas. The repetition should create a thread of obsession, not a patchwork of unrelated thoughts.

Here's my honest take: the sestina is the most underrated form in English. People flock to sonnets and haiku, but the sestina rewards patience in ways those shorter forms can't. The slow accumulation of meaning across 39 lines creates an almost trance-like effect. It's closer to music than most poetry gets.

Famous Sestina Examples

Elizabeth Bishop's "Sestina" (1965) remains the gold standard. Set in a grandmother's kitchen on a rainy evening, it uses deceptively simple end words to build an atmosphere of quiet grief:

"September rain falls on the house.
In the failing light, the old grandmother
sits in the kitchen with the child
beside the Little Marvel Stove,
reading the jokes from the almanac,
laughing and talking to hide her tears."

— Elizabeth Bishop, Sestina

Bishop never tells you what the grief is about. The repeating words, especially "tears," do that work through accumulation. By the poem's end, even the almanac is weeping. That's the power of end word repetition done right: the form itself becomes the emotion.

Algernon Charles Swinburne's "The Complaint of Lisa" (1878) takes a different approach, using the obsessive structure to mirror romantic fixation. The lesson from Swinburne: pick a subject that actually benefits from repetition. Love, grief, obsession, memory, these themes and the sestina were made for each other.