Sasha2 Nov 2004

I know full well what a sestina is. It is the form with six repeating words that end lines in a pre-set pattern, familiar to any poet who has been in a workshop. However, the form is straining and working against the poem here. Many times the words, especially the word "nurse," are crying to be replaced with a more apt word. The only thing preventing that is that you have shoehorned the entire poem into a form ill suited to the poem's needs.