Ponyville & Other Poems

by AugieDog

1 - Ponyville (sestina)

Ponyville glimmers, a beacon of kindness,
Sweetness an ocean whose pure generosity
Laps at the citizens' doorsteps in friendship.
Windjammer sharp spread her sails of loyalty,
Open to breezes ashimmer with laughter,
Gliding to dock using ropes spun from honesty.

Ponyville glitters, and yet in all honesty,
Something about her seems lacking in kindness.
Often her dusty suspicions choke laughter,
Make her go squinty-eyed, false generosity
Offering smiles that seem to lack loyalty.
Who here could not use some lessons in friendship?

Ponyville loves all her neighbors, but friendship?
Zebras and griffons and dragons? Her honesty
Forces a wry little chuckle while loyalty
Squirms in discomfort and calls out for kindness:
"Sure, they're not ponies, but show generosity!
Buy them a drink without rancor or laughter!"

Ponyville staggers amid drunken laughter,
Shouts up and down about undying friendship,
Pirouettes grandly and spurts generosity.
Face-down come morning, the cold light of honesty
Blurs the whole evening, an uncertain kindness,
Memory turning away out of loyalty.

Ponyville ponders, decides this is loyalty:
Filling an icepack with chuckles, not laughter.
Comrades now, bonded in hungover kindness,
Coffee so perfect, it's better than friendship,
Quietly sharing a moment of honesty.
Unspoken lessons create generosity.

Ponyville basks in the sun's generosity,
Passes out ice tea and sunscreen, her loyalty
Not just to ponies: to all who in honesty
Sang with her last night and danced to her laughter.
Warm and contented, she knows what makes friendship:
Ugliness transformed by mutual kindness.

True generosity tempered with laughter,
Ponyville's loyalty tells her in friendship:
That's the way honesty kills 'em with kindness.

Author's Note:

For all the arcane details about making a sestina in the comfort of your own home, check the article on Wikipedia!

Comments

[HyperBlossom7]

Ohh I remember learning about this kind of poem in a creative writing class....I forget what it was called, but this was BEAUTIFUL!

Mind you when I wrote that kind of poem for homework, I failed. I repeated too much, in a literal sense.

[AugieDog]

3485390

I have kind of a:

Mixed relationship with the whole sestina concept. On more than one occasion, I've called it the "beer pong" of formal verse, something that's more a drinking game than a poetic form. But as has turned out to be the case with most everything, when you add Ponies to it, it gets much more fun. And, well, there are six Elements of Harmony, right? So a sestina was just natural!

Mike

[Blue_Paladin42]

That's the way honesty kills 'em with kindness.

I really like this line in particular. Couldn't tell ya why, but there you have it.

[AugieDog]

3503072

That line:

Is a prime example of the wonderful serendipity of poetry writing.

See, with a sestina, once you choose the six words that're gonna end each line, there's a set swirling pattern for the subsequent stanzas. The one at the end of the first line, for instance, will end the second line of the next stanza, and the one in the last line will end the first line next time. So I set to work writing a first stanza using the six Elements of Harmony--and when I'd finished, I realized that I couldn't use it as the first stanza. It needed a stanza before it to set it up, so I had to do the swirling pattern in reverse to figure out what words would end the lines in a preceding stanza.

Doing this got me "kindness" at the end of the first line, and I remembered that the word at the end of the first stanza's first line is also the last word of the whole poem. And my brain piped up with the helpful suggestion that I could then end the whole thing with the phrase "kill 'em with kindness" as a way of summing the whole thing up.

And we all lived happily ever after!

Mike

[journcy]

I actually have plans to write a sestina for a story I'm writing... Am going to write... Whatever. I really love how well the form fits in with the themes and characters of this show--mainly, of course, the use of the number six in many regards.

[TheJediMasterEd]

Great stuff! The form itself is hard enough to make rhyme and rattle, but you've actually used it to say something, and something that fits the form uniquely well.

A friend and I once drunkenly dared each other to write sestinas using the suites of the tarot ("This week on 'Poetic Jackass'..."). Mine was crap but his was genuinely lovely.

Speaking of sestinas, I've been reading Dante's Purgatorio and he and Virgil have just run into Arnaut Daniel (doing time for Lust). In the original poem, Dante actually has Daniel speaking in Provencal French to emphasize his foreignness and antiquity. Of course I'm reading a translation in modern English so the translator of my version (John Ciardi, and a damn good job he does too) has Daniel speaking in something close to Middle English:

And he replied at once and willingly:
"Such pleasaunce have I of thy gentilesse,
that I ne can, ne will I hide from thee.

"Arnaut am I, and weepe and sing my faring.
In grievousnesse I see my follies past:
in joie, the blistful daie of my preparing..."

Great stuff as well

[AugieDog]

3811620

It's the number six:

That did it for me, too. I'd only ever written one of these things before, and it was in a situation where I had one character who was annoyingly baroque wanting to describe six other characters...

3812227

Thanks!

Drunken sestina writing would be my preferred method, too, but I don't drink. So I don't really have any excuse.

One of the prizes of my father's book collection is this giant-sized edition of the Inferno translated by Henry Francis Cary with illustrations by Gustave Dore. When I was reading the Ciardi version of Inferno back in my long-gone college days, I would have both books open so I could get the full effect of the terrific words and the pictures...

Mike

[TheJediMasterEd]

Let's drink! Drink!
This town is so great!
Drink! Drink!
'Cause it's never too late
to drink! Drink
To no big surprise--
But what words rhyme with "buried alive?"

[AugieDog]

4194458

Oh I have been to Ludlow fair
And left my necktie God knows where,
And carried half way home, or near,
Pints and quarts of Ludlow beer:
Then the world seemed none so bad,
And I myself a sterling lad;
And down in lovely muck I’ve lain,
Happy till I woke again.
Then I saw the morning sky:
Heigho, the tale was all a lie;
The world, it was the old world yet,
I was I, my things were wet,
And nothing now remained to do
But begin the game anew.

[AxelS]

Wow. That was beautiful.

[AugieDog]

4736503

Thanks!

And there's more of 'em, too!

Mike

[SongCoyote]

Greetings!

TheJediMasterEd suggested I check out this story-poem collection because of my own penchant for poetry, not least because when sufficiently moved, I am wont to drop sonnets as comments on stories. I admit I was dubious; the poetry of others can be difficult to digest if it is not to one's personal tastes, let alone if it rubs up against one's perceptions of the technical requirements and merits of a particular form.

Then I read your opening sestina, and I knew TJMEd had not steered me wrong. It's truly wonderful, and a fine example of the craft.

I shall now peruse more of your creations, seeking for gems. I cannot help but think I will not be disappointed

Light and laughter,
SongCoyote

[AugieDog]

5781399

Thanks!

I have way too much fun doing these, especially the several limerick cycles scattered throughout. 'Cause everybody writes sonnet cycles!

And if you find anything that doesn't scan--a couple lines in this sestina make me itchy, now that I'm looking at it a year and a quarter later--please let me know!

Mike

[PresentPerfect]

Fantastic. What a perfect poetic form for the show. :D

[AugieDog]

6640834

Thanks!

Coming from you, that means quite a lot.

Mike

[PresentPerfect]

Have another reading!

[AugieDog]

9174474

Hee hee hee!

You're spoiling me, Pres!

I've actually got another of these dang sestina's in the works focusing on the six new student characters from this season. We'll see how that comes out...

Mike