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A sestina is a poetic form composed of six stanzas of six lines each, followed by a three-line stanza called an envoi, for a total of thirty-nine lines. The last word of each line in the first stanza of a sestina is also used to end the lines in each subsequent stanza, except the order of those end words differs for each stanza. That order is as follows (each letter represents an end word within that stanza):

Stanza 1: ABCDEF
Stanza 2: FAEBDC
Stanza 3: CFDABE
Stanza 4: ECBFAD
Stanza 5: DEACFB
Stanza 6: BDFECA
Envoi: ECA or ACE

The sestina form is often attributed to Arnaut Daniel, a twelfth-century Provençal troubadour writing in the Occitan language. Since then, the form has been adopted by countless poets across many different languages, including a lot of poets writing in English in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. We’ve gathered some of our favorite modern and contemporary sestinas from JSTOR to share. All are available for free download:

“Sestina for Lizzette,” Noelle Kocot
“What Would You Ask the Artist?” Terrance Hayes
“Sestina Ayotzinapa,” Joyelle McSweeney
“The Painter,” John Ashbery
“Sestina,” Niki Herd
“Psychiatrist’s Sestina,” Louise Glück
“A Sestina in 1979,” Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet
“A Miracle for Breakfast,” Elizabeth Bishop
“If See No End in Is,” Frank Bidart
“Ethel’s Sestina,” Patricia Smith

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Resources

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The Sestina: An Exploration of the Dynamics of Poetic Structure
By: Margaret Spanos
Speculum, Vol. 53, No. 3 (July 1978), pp. 545–557
The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Medieval Academy of America
Sestina for Lizzette
By: Noelle Kocot
The Iowa Review, Vol. 28, No. 1 (Spring 1998), pp. 80–81
University of Iowa
What Would You Ask the Artist?
By: Terrance Hayes
The Georgia Review, Vol. 74, No. 4 (WINTER 2020), pp. 916–919
Georgia Review
Sestina Ayotzinapa
By: Joyelle McSweeney
The American Poetry Review, Vol. 45, No. 2 (MARCH/APRIL 2016), p. 16
Old City Publishing, Inc.
The Painter
By: John Ashbery
Poetry, Vol. 87, No. 3 (December 1955), pp. 154–155
Poetry Foundation
Sestina
By: Niki Herd
Feminist Formations, Vol. 24, No. 2 (Summer 2012), pp. 188–189
The Johns Hopkins University Press
Psychiatrist’s Sestina
By: Louise Glück
The Threepenny Review, No. 19 (Autumn 1984), p. 15
Threepenny Review
A Sestina in 1979
By: Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet
World Literature Today, Vol. 95, No. 1 (Winter 2021), p. 15
Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma
A Miracle for Breakfast
By: Elizabeth Bishop
Poetry, Vol. 121, No. 1, Sixtieth Anniversary Issue: 1912-1972 First Appearances (October 1972), pp. 3–4
Poetry Foundation
If See No End in Is
By: Frank Bidart
Poetry, Vol. 191, No. 1 (October 2007), pp. 7–8
Poetry Foundation
Ethel’s Sestina
By: Patricia Smith
Callaloo, Vol. 29, No. 4, American Tragedy: New Orleans under Water (Autumn 2006), pp. 1344–1345
The Johns Hopkins University Press