Poetry Responce #9/I give up trying to figure out how to indent

Virginia Byde Pacetti
Mrs. Jernigan
AP English
28 March 2011
Poetry Response #9 Second Semester
Sandra Beasley wrote her poem Let Me count the Waves as a sestina based upon a quote by Donald Revell, which reads, “we must not look for poetry in poems.” The last line in her first stanza echoes that sentiment, “and never look for poetry in poems.” This statement seems to warn the reader not to ever force a poetic meaning out of an enjoyable art form while simultaneously tempting one to do so. Her repeating line enders are “skirts,” “ducks,” “face,” “butt,” “home,” and “poems.” In addition to their initial ending positions and subsequent placement in the other stanzas, Beasley utilizes polyptoton in the opining stanza on five of the lines occasionally using a verb and noun form that have separate meanings completely (the word “skirt” as in dodge and “skirts” like the clothing item.)
The ridged structure of the sestina highlights the playfulness described in writing a poem and the outlandish suggestions (like monkeys in skirts) by juxtaposing the thesis of the poem which is ironically, “what is form? Turning art into artifice.” I was actually discussing the other day in Creative Writing about the pointe in which prose disappears and blank and free verse exist. And for various reasons when set with the task of writing a poem I concentrate immensely on structure and form, generally failing. Yet the poems I write that actually possess some semblance of balance and structures are ones that begin organically with a clever idea and are not written as an assignment. But they usually still contain some overarching or repeating rhyme concept or structural parallelism.