Everyone says that sestinas are hard to write.* For some reason it did not take me much time to compose mine, maybe because I was always looking forward doing so.
I read as little sestinas as possible before I attempted mine, only just enough not to get confused and be aware of the possibilities. I find it far more interesting to be able to transcend the limitations of the convention without knowing what have been attempted in the past so I do not feel compelled to try it myself. In the very beginning I wanted to use six colours as my last six words (black, red, blue, white, yellow and green) and ascribe emotion to every colour, this however proved to be very difficult to do. After I failed on my noble quest to create colourful sestina I came up with my second idea – to capture my story in six acts an epilogue therefore referring to the fact that sestina is a form of storytelling.
I wrote my last three lines in the beginning to establish closure that will bear all six key words. I say key because in this case they are meant to point towards the true meaning of the poem. Together with the title they are clues that can be used to decipher the story as it were. These six words are: home, pills, fire, blue, stupid and black. Nevertheless I will not speak much about that as I personally prefer if poem is a convoluted combination of masks upon disguises for each reader to explore in their own unique way. I will however explain further the meaning of the title. I do believe that without supplementary clarification it will always come as ambiguous and somehow disconnected from the storyline of the poem. The word sublimation is therefore a reference to the psychological process that channels morally ambiguous impulses into the socially accepted behaviour. For me it also comes from the word sublime that happens also to be a name of a particular band who once upon a time recorded a song called ‘Date Rape’; and we leave it at that.
* I say that odes are far more difficult.
No comments:
Post a Comment