h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Great, Jabs, very

Hi Bel, I loved your sestina!

Thank you, PC.

This is all very encouraging, maybe I'll try to think of something myself next.

Wherre is B'Elana's poem? I haven't seen it yet. [nor did I see the advice on how to write one, I done it in my head from the general pattern]

Jabs

Have a look at post #13 for the lionk to my poem.

Sestina: six verses ending on non-rhyming words, the last words from the first verse (let's call them a,b,c,d,e,f) have to be repeated in the next five verses, in a changing (but determined) order. Then you have a last verse with three lines, repeating each word in the same order like in the first verse (two words per line).

Oh, and each of the six verses has six lines.

re 17:

okay, you got it. check my journal

Thank you.

B'Elana, , the model I was following was quite different to yours*. I think you should be aware of that in your entry - there are many different patterns for sestinas.

With mine, the lines don't have to be the same length, and the tercet needs to have all 6 end-words in it according to a prescribed pattern. The rest of the pattern of end-words is different too, obviously.

BUT (sorry, no italics available), the major difference is that you, being a European, write in a syllabic form whereas the English tradition relies on rhythm and stresses. So in English, Go and Fetch the Water has the same stresses (stresses on Go Fetch Wa.. for example ) as Go and Have a Drink, (3 each) (English) - whereas the no. of syllables is different (European syllabic form esp. French) (6-5).

So they were both sestinas. I made mine up in a prescribed form, though different to yours, one of the many in this book (in English I'm afraid):

*REFerence: The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms (Paperback)
by M Strand (Author) (in English I'm afraid).

Jabs

Politics aside, though, England is part of Europe, and its language and poetry reflects this. Patterns of stress in English are much closer to German than either are to French.

This is true, though I once had an awful time with a professor of mine in graduate school, when he assigned me to analyse the verse forms in Faust II.

Which I did according to English prosody, only to find out that he wanted me to follow Martin Opitz.

Thanks for this, King Bomba. All you say is accepted, but I was dealing with nuances. I didn't know that German was all that close to English, I must admit, but it's certainly closer than French (where admittedly Sestinas originated - or was it italy? - France was important, at least).

There is a reference to the book I referred to on the net, just found it, but oddly it doesn't mention the many forms in the book. Perhaps the net version is an introduction. There certainly are many patterns based on the same fundamental form, so as well as defending my sestina I thought B'Elana ought to know before she publishes in The Guide. Just a short note would do.

Her sestina's very good.

Jabs

dmitri - Opitz - thanks for mentioning him

Jabs

Thank you, Jabs.

I didn't intend to write a guide entry about sestinas.

I'm not sure why you felt you had to defend yours, I certainly didn't attack it (except if 'great' and 'cool' have a meaning I'm not aware of).

Thanks B'Elana -









Jabs

Late to the party here, but just wanted to say - wow, what a terrific sestina!

Go BEL!

's'Ok, Jabs.


Thanks, Bea.

Sorry I'm a bit late to this party, B'El, but I just had to say that I think that your sestina is nice; for the most part it flows very naturally.

As for the mills, those models are quite interesting. When my mom's family first immigrated from Scotland, we were millers. Had to move around a bit to find a place where the mill dam didn't annoy our "neighbors." (Hard to think of neighbors on one hundred acre parcels, but apparently we annoyed them!)
Anyway, our three story mill ground grain, sawed lumber and carded wool. People came from all over and had to be put up for the night and fed (horses too) because you couldn't make the trip and get the work done and go home all in a day.
During the war, some northern soldiers tried, unsuccessfully, to burn it. They had to move on because they were holding a prisoner, so the family came out of hiding and dumped the smoldering wool in the creek, saving our mill. Finally, it washed away in a flood. (In the thirties, I think.)
My grandfather had made a cardboard model of it, as he remembered it. We wish we knew what has become of that model. Your model pictures reminded me of it.

Thankks, hstwrd. That sounds very interesting, wouldn't you fancy writing a guide entry about that mill?

I wanna know where that mill is.

When you said your ancestors immigrated from Scotland, I was thinking Australia...

But when you mentioned the War of Northern Aggression, the light bu'b lit up.

Was this in Tennessee somewhere?