If you don’t understand the structure and process of sestina, perhaps you’d like to learn?  If you go to my published poetry onBookstove at:

Setting the Scene for Sestina

http://bookstove.com/poetry/setting-the-scene-for-sestina/

…you can not only learn the structure but you can teach the kids too!

***

Chosen end words –

1. Plum

 2. Net

3. Love

4. Saw

5. Shoes

6. Dancer

A sestina has 6 stanzas using the format of:

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

6, 1. 5. 2. 4, 3

3, 6, 4, 1, 2, 5

5, 3, 2, 6, 1, 4

4, 5, 1, 3, 6, 2

2, 4, 6, 5, 3, 1

And one final stanza of three lines using all six end words.

 BALLET AND BELLY – A DANCER’S DREAM

 She danced in the Nutcracker Suite, the Sugar Plum

Fairy, in a tutu of pink cerise net.

Ballet had always been her first love

since the age of three when she saw

Swan Lake on a video.  “I want ballet shoes.”

“Can I have ballet shoes?  Be a dancer?”

She became a Prima Ballerina: a dazzling dancer

with the Royal Ballet: always got the plum

roles, up on her toes in satin ballet shoes,

pushing the boundaries of pain in creations of net

in the hottest productions you ever saw

because ballet, for her, was a labour of love

Yet, sometimes she yearned for her second sweet love,

To dabble in the world of the belly-dancer.

On holiday in Turkey one year, she saw

the swivelling hips, the rolling gyrations of a plump

belly and a jewelled navel.  Caught in the net,

she longed for low-slung skirts, an anklet with bells – no shoes

“Sorry, dear, you’re hopeless for sparkling costumes – no shoes.”

“Too thin, scarred feet.  Stick to the ballet you’re good at, love.”

Approaching this dancing school, found on the internet,

She’d envisaged a future as a hip-curling belly-dancer

But now the tears welled in her eyes, cheeks turned plum.

Those words had hurt like a jagged-edged saw

until it dawned like a bright light.  She saw

that she’d never been cut out to dance without shoes.

Being a ballerina – a Prima Ballerina – was plum.

It was mint – it was ace – she was truly in love

With the role she’d thought to desert: a dancer –

a ballet dancer, in ballet shoes and silk and net.

She considered telling her friend, Annette

about her near-miss.  But she quickly saw,

if she confided her desire to be a belly-dancer

in glittering skirt, bell-heavy anklet – no shoes,

word would get out to the man she loved

and that was much too fine a line to plumb

But at night, in dreams, she saw her love-struck audience

through veils of plum net as she, resplendent in the spotlight,

Danced bare-foot, skirts swirling – no shoes.

Copyright© Sheila Newton 2011     

If you enjoyed reading my work, perhaps you’d like to link to some of my other work online.

You’ll find links to all of my online published short stories, articles and poetry on my website,

Write Angles with Sheila, at:

www.writeangleswithsheila.wordpress.com

My personal blog, Writing for My Life is at:

http://sheilanewton.blogspot.com  

…and my Travel Blog, Sheilas Wheels, cataloguing ’Sheila’s Amazing Adventures’ is at:

http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog/sheilaswheels/1/tpod.html

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