The best examples of famous sestina poems: examples & insights

Before talking about rules or structure, it helps to see the form in the wild. The best examples of famous sestina poems show you what’s possible when repetition becomes a design tool instead of a straightjacket.

Some of the most widely cited examples include:

• Elizabeth Bishop – “Sestina” (1956)
• Ezra Pound – “Sestina: Altaforte” (1909)
• W. H. Auden – “Paysage Moralisé” (1933)
• John Ashbery – “Farm Implements and Rutabagas in a Landscape” (1970)
• A. E. Stallings – “Sestina: Like” (2011)
• Terrance Hayes – “Sestina” from American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin era readings
• Marilyn Hacker – “Against Elegies” (1994)
• Anthony Hecht – “The Book of Yolek” (1977)

These are not just historical curiosities. They’re living, teachable examples of famous sestina poems: examples & insights into how poets bend a strict pattern into something emotionally sharp, political, or even funny.

Elizabeth Bishop’s “Sestina”: the go‑to example of quiet devastation

If you’re looking for a near‑perfect example of a traditional sestina, Bishop’s “Sestina” is usually the first stop. It’s short, domestic, and weirdly heartbreaking.

Her six end‑words are: house, grandmother, child, stove, almanac, tears. Read the poem and you’ll see how those words keep circling back, but never in quite the same emotional position. A “house” at the opening feels solid; by the end, it feels haunted. “Tears” start literal, then drift into metaphor.

This is one of the best examples of a famous sestina where the emotional temperature rises by tiny degrees. No explosions, no shouting, just a kitchen, some rain, and a sense that something is very wrong under the surface.

Why this example works for writers:

• The vocabulary is simple. No fancy diction, just everyday words.
• The drama is mostly subtext. The repetition makes you feel the child’s unease without spelling it out.
• The envoi (final three lines) braids the end‑words gracefully, proving you don’t have to force the pattern.

If you’re studying examples of famous sestina poems, examples & insights from Bishop’s piece show how repetition can feel like memory, not a technical exercise.

You can read Bishop’s work and related materials through archives like the Poetry Foundation and academic collections at sites such as Harvard University for contextual notes and manuscripts.

Ezra Pound’s “Sestina: Altaforte”: when the form goes full heavy metal

If Bishop’s “Sestina” is a quiet horror movie, Ezra Pound’s “Sestina: Altaforte” is a stadium rock concert about war. The speaker is Bertran de Born, a medieval troubadour who basically treats battle like a party theme.

Pound’s six end‑words: peace, music, clangor, opposing, crimson, rejoicing. Notice how even the vocabulary is loud. This is one of the starkest examples of famous sestina poems where repetition mimics obsession. The speaker keeps circling back to war as if it’s the only thing that makes him feel alive.

Insights from this example:

• Repetition here feels like drumming. You can almost hear the armor and horses.
• The form amplifies the character’s mania. The same words keep returning because he can’t let go of violence.
• The envoi slams the theme home instead of softening it.

If you want a high‑energy example of a famous sestina that leans into drama and voice, this is your model. It’s also a reminder that the form isn’t just for quiet, literary sadness; it can handle rage, politics, and spectacle.

W. H. Auden’s “Paysage Moralisé”: landscape as moral puzzle

Auden’s “Paysage Moralisé” is one of the best examples of a mid‑20th‑century sestina that uses landscape as a philosophical playground. The poem turns an outdoor scene into a meditation on choice, ethics, and human behavior.

Auden uses the sestina structure to keep returning to the same visual anchors, but each time they carry a slightly different moral shading. If Bishop’s poem feels like a memory loop and Pound’s like a drum solo, Auden’s feels like a thought experiment.

For writers, this is a helpful example of famous sestina poems: examples & insights into how you can use the form to think through an idea, not just tell a story. The repeated end‑words become signposts in a debate.

John Ashbery’s “Farm Implements and Rutabagas in a Landscape”: surrealism in sestina form

John Ashbery looked at the sestina and apparently thought, “What if Popeye walked in?” His “Farm Implements and Rutabagas in a Landscape” is a cult‑favorite example of a famous sestina that leans all the way into surrealism.

The poem’s end‑words include things like Popeye and spinach, and the whole piece feels like a painting that refuses to sit still. This is a strong example of how the sestina can handle pop culture and absurdity without falling apart.

Why this example matters now:

• It shows that you don’t have to write about medieval knights or tragic grandmothers. You can write about cartoons, memes, or your group chat.
• The poem still respects the pattern, proving that experimentation doesn’t mean ignoring structure.

For anyone writing in 2024–2025, Ashbery’s poem is permission to get weird. When people ask for modern examples of famous sestina poems, examples include this one precisely because it broke so many tonal expectations.

A. E. Stallings’ “Sestina: Like”: social media anxiety in strict form

Jump to the 21st century and you get A. E. Stallings’ “Sestina: Like”, one of the best recent examples of a sestina that feels painfully current. The key end‑word here is “like”—as in Facebook likes, filler speech, and the general fog of online approval.

Stallings uses “like” in almost every possible sense: simile, social media, verbal tic. The poem becomes a mirror of how “like” clutters our speech and thinking. It’s a textbook example of famous sestina poems: examples & insights into how to take one overused word and squeeze it for meaning.

Why this hits in 2024–2025:

• It speaks directly to digital life, influencer culture, and algorithm anxiety.
• It shows how a sestina can critique tech and language trends without sounding like a rant.
• It’s a strong model for choosing one overloaded word and making it the spine of your poem.

If you’re writing about social media, online identity, or the way language gets flattened on the internet, this is one of the best examples to study.

Terrance Hayes & Marilyn Hacker: political and personal pressure cookers

Two more late‑20th and early‑21st‑century poets who give us powerful examples of famous sestina poems are Terrance Hayes and Marilyn Hacker.

Terrance Hayes’s contemporary sestinas

Hayes is better known for his sonnets, but his sestina work, often read in live performances and scattered through interviews and collections, treats the form like a pressure cooker for race, masculinity, and American history. His end‑words tend to be loaded: terms tied to identity, violence, and survival.

These are real examples of sestinas where the pattern feels like a heartbeat under stress. The repetition echoes how certain words—slurs, headlines, names—won’t leave the public conversation.

Marilyn Hacker’s “Against Elegies”

Hacker’s “Against Elegies” is another standout example of a famous sestina that tackles illness, grief, and queer identity. The repeating end‑words keep circling around loss and resistance, turning a personal story into something politically charged.

For writers in 2024–2025, these poems show how the sestina can engage with:

• Public trauma (AIDS, police violence, war)
• Private grief (partners, friends, chosen family)
• The intersection of identity and politics

When people ask for examples of famous sestina poems: examples & insights that feel socially and emotionally current, Hacker and Hayes belong on that reading list.

Anthony Hecht’s “The Book of Yolek”: history as recurring nightmare

Anthony Hecht’s “The Book of Yolek” uses the sestina form to confront the Holocaust. The poem references a boy taken to a concentration camp, and the repeating end‑words keep dragging the reader back to that historical horror.

This is one of the best examples of a sestina that uses repetition as haunting. The pattern mirrors how history repeats, how anniversaries return, how memory refuses to stay politely in the past.

If you’re looking for an example of a famous sestina that handles historical trauma without sensationalism, Hecht’s poem is a strong study text.

For context on historical trauma, memory, and even long‑term mental health effects, resources from institutions like the National Institutes of Health and Mayo Clinic can help you understand the psychological backdrop that poets often write from.

What these examples of famous sestina poems have in common

Across all these examples of famous sestina poems—Bishop’s kitchen, Pound’s battlefield, Ashbery’s cartoon world, Stallings’ social feed—some patterns keep showing up:

• Repetition as meaning, not just pattern. The best examples don’t repeat words just because the form says so. Each return adds a new shade of meaning.
• Concrete end‑words. “House,” “tears,” “music,” “like,” “spinach.” Simple, touchable nouns or short words that can flex.
• A turning envoi. The final three lines don’t just tie a bow on the poem; they often twist the knife, flip the mood, or zoom out.
• Tension between chaos and order. The strict pattern keeps things organized while the content—war, grief, memory, online noise—pushes against the walls.

That tension is why readers and poets still care about sestinas in 2024–2025, even in a world obsessed with short‑form everything.

How 2024–2025 writers are using the sestina form

If you hang out in online poetry spaces—Substack newsletters, Instagram poets who secretly love form, MFA programs posting student work—you’ll see new examples of famous sestina poems popping up in some interesting ways:

• Mental health narratives. Writers use the looping structure to mirror anxiety spirals, intrusive thoughts, or recurring trauma. Articles from sources like NIMH or WebMD about anxiety and PTSD can give you language and insight to shape these poems without stereotyping.
• Climate grief. Repeating end‑words like fire, flood, plastic, data, coral, heat show up in sestinas about environmental collapse.
• Digital overload. Like Stallings’ “Like,” newer poems fixate on words such as scroll, feed, like, mute, doom, ping.
• Hybrid forms. Some poets mix sestina patterns with free verse spacing, prose blocks, or visual experimentation, while still keeping the end‑word rotation.

These modern uses broaden the field of examples of famous sestina poems: examples & insights that don’t feel stuck in an English‑department time capsule.

Writing your own: borrowing moves from the best examples

Studying examples is one thing; stealing their moves (ethically) is where the fun starts. Here are a few strategies you can lift from the best examples of famous sestina poems:

• From Bishop: Choose end‑words that seem ordinary but can slide from literal to emotional.
• From Pound: Let your speaker be intense. The form can handle obsession.
• From Ashbery: Bring in pop culture or surreal images; the structure will keep them from flying apart.
• From Stallings: Pick a word that annoys you—corporate jargon, tech slang, a cliché—and make it the star.
• From Hacker and Hayes: Use the sestina to hold big, heavy topics: identity, politics, historical trauma.

If you’re teaching, these examples of famous sestina poems, examples & insights from each, give you ready‑made lesson hooks: one poem per mood, one formal trick per class.

FAQ: quick answers about sestinas and examples

Q: Can you give a short example of how sestina end‑words rotate?
A: Picture six end‑words labeled A, B, C, D, E, F. In stanza one, they appear in that order. In stanza two, the order shifts to F, A, E, B, D, C. Each new stanza reorders them according to a fixed pattern. Reading real examples of famous sestina poems—like Bishop’s “Sestina” or Pound’s “Sestina: Altaforte”—is the fastest way to see that rotation in action.

Q: What are some good examples of sestinas for beginners to study?
A: Start with Bishop’s “Sestina”, then read A. E. Stallings’ “Sestina: Like” and John Ashbery’s “Farm Implements and Rutabagas in a Landscape.” Those three give you a quiet, a contemporary, and a surreal example of famous sestina poems: examples & insights that cover a wide range of tones.

Q: Is it okay to break the rules I see in these examples?
A: Yes. Many modern poets keep the end‑word pattern but relax meter or rhyme. Some even tweak the final envoi. Study the best examples first so you know what you’re breaking, then experiment.

Q: Are there published contemporary examples of sestinas in journals?
A: Absolutely. Many literary magazines—print and online—publish new sestinas. Look for them in outlets that love formal experimentation. When editors mention “received forms” in their guidelines, sestinas are usually on that list.

If you treat these poems as a toolbox instead of a museum, you’ll start to see why writers keep coming back to this form. The most powerful examples of famous sestina poems—examples & insights from Bishop, Pound, Ashbery, Stallings, Hayes, Hacker, Hecht, and others—prove that six little end‑words can hold a whole universe, as long as you’re willing to let them repeat until they finally say what they mean.