Poetic Form
Sestina
Invented by the Provençal troubadour Arnaut Daniel (12th c.); perfected by Dante and Petrarch. The obsessive recycling of end-words enacts themes of fixation and return.
Definition
A 39-line poem of six six-line stanzas, each using the same six end-words in a rotating pattern, plus a three-line envoi.
Example
Elizabeth Bishop's 'Sestina' (1965); Swinburne's 'The Complaint of Lisa'; W.H. Auden's 'Paysage Moralisé'.