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Sestina tends to have a scary ring to it, and I imagine many fall back with a look of fright at the mere sound of the word. We all have, it's all right.
While looking up the rules for a sestina, I stumbled upon a marvelous set of essays on poetry, written by Vince Gotera for an introductory poetry-writing college class.
When I was growing up in San Francisco in the late Sixties, the everyday talk of my friends and me often transpired in black slang (now called African American Vernacular English by linguists). We would say, for example, "My lady be stylin." Roughly translated, this means something like "My girlfriend consistently dresses in an attractive and fashionable style."
Perhaps this sentence in black English may remind you of an often-quoted sentence, "The style is the man himself" (Comte de Buffon). Or it may not.
-From Style.
While looking up the rules for a sestina, I stumbled upon a marvelous set of essays on poetry, written by Vince Gotera for an introductory poetry-writing college class.
When I was growing up in San Francisco in the late Sixties, the everyday talk of my friends and me often transpired in black slang (now called African American Vernacular English by linguists). We would say, for example, "My lady be stylin." Roughly translated, this means something like "My girlfriend consistently dresses in an attractive and fashionable style."
Perhaps this sentence in black English may remind you of an often-quoted sentence, "The style is the man himself" (Comte de Buffon). Or it may not.
-From Style.
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