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Grace Bauer, A Little Like Dorothy 3 Rafael Campo, Sestina in Red 40 Ruth Foley, Prayer For The Abandoned 128 Marilyn Hacker, Towards Autumn 67 George Held, Inauguration Sestina 7 Martha Kalin, Glowing Doors 69 Austin MacRae, The Organ Builder 71 Mary Meriam, A Tragedy of Flowers 75 Marilyn Nelson, Keeper of The Keys (1740) 13 Alfred Nicol, Clock 78 Marie Ponsot, Half-Life: Copies To All Concerned 80 Tony Trigilio, Jean Hill 20 Lewis Turco, The Obsession 86 Tim Upperton, Saint Joseph’s Convent, Waipukurau, 1967 87 Carolyn Beard Whitlow, Book of Ruth 56 *Most of the classic sestinas that have come down to us in English—Swinburne and Pound et al.—are written in iambic pentameter. However, though nowadays many if not most sestinas are written in free verse, some contemporary sestinas also employ iambic pentameter such as Austin MacRae’s melodic poem “The Organ Builder”: So man / y nights / I’ve list / ened to / the fugue that filled / his shop/ to keep / his world / alive, as if / his long / -unfin / ished mas / terpiece of pine / wood pipes / and ma / ple stops / gave birth Other sestinas in iambic pentameter include Alfred Nicol’s “Clock” and Lewis Turco’s “The Obsession.” Poems richly but not strictly metered—or with more than usual substitute feet—include Marilyn Hacker’s “Towards Autumn”; Martha Kalin’s “Glowing Doors”; Carolyn Beard Whitlow’s “Book of Ruth”; Grace Bauer’s “A Little Like Dorothy”; and George Held’s “Inauguration (1997) Sestina.” What is noticeable about many sestinas is that the teleutons have “feminine”—unstressed—final syllables, not the often-found strong stress on the final syllable in iambic meter. Some sestinas exhibit “the ghost of meter,” a phrase coined by Annie Finch as discussed in her book of the same title. In addition, poems in this index are packed with alliteration, consonance, assonance and internal, off- and slant rhyme. Though syllabic poems most often repeat an odd number of syllables (7, 9, 11) some poems in this category repeat the expected syllable count for iambic pentameter poetry (10/11 syllables, particularly), but though the syllable count is correct, the rhythm is not predominantly iambic. Thus, these poems have been labeled as syllabic: they don’t meet the requirements of meter but offer greater syllabic control than in free verse. INDEX OF (LOOSELY) METRICAL AND SYLLABIC SESTINAS ...

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