Sestina: John (gen, 500 words). Happy second day of National Poetry Month!

[bironic]

I still think this could use improvement, but here it is anyway.

Title: Sestina: John
Fandom: Stargate: Atlantis
Characters: John/team/gen
Rating: PG
Word Count: 500
Summary: John finds a home.
Spoilers: "Rising."
Disclaimer: Neither the canon nor the fanon that inspired this are mine.
A/N: I'm glad to have this finished, finally. Big thanks to

Comments

[cupidsbow]

I remember that conversation we had, mainly because I found your use of the sestina form so interesting.

One of the things you've done really well in this sestina is evoked the sea in so many ways in the different stanzas, so that it becomes a kind of palimpsest linking home-John-Atlantis. It's such a perfect image for Atlantis, and it makes the the penultimate stanza with "All that anchors him are daily phone calls from his team" so poignant.

Since we last talked about this, I found one of the poems I was trying to evoke for you. It's "Sestina d'Inverno" by Anthony Hecht.

Here in this bleak city of Rochester,
Where there are twenty-seven words for "snow,"
Not all of them polite, the wayward mind
Basks in some Yucatan of its own making,
Some coppery, sleek lagoon, or cinnamon island
Alive with lemon tints and burnished natives,

And O that we were there. But here the natives
Of this gray, sunless city of Rochester
Have sown whole mines of salt about their land
(Bare ruined Carthage that it is) while snow
Comes down as if The Flood were in the making.
Yet on that ocean Marvell called the mind

An ark sets forth which is itself the mind,
Bound for some pungent green, some shore whose natives
Blend coriander, cayenne, mint in making
Roasts that would gladden the Earl of Rochester
With sinfulness, and melt polar snow.
It might be well to remember that an island

Was a blessed haven once, more than an island,
The grand, utopian dream of a noble mind.
In that kind of climate the mere thought of snow
Was but a wedding cake; the youthful natives,
Unable to conceive of Rochester,
Made love, and were acrobatic in the making.

Dream as we may, there is far more to making
Do than some wistful reverie of an island,
Especially now when hope lies with the Rochester
Gas and Electric Co., which doesn't mind
Such profitable weather, while the natives
Sink, like Pompeians, under a world of snow.

The one thing indisputable here is snow,
The single verity of heaven's making,
Deeply indifferent to the dreams of the natives
And the torn boarding-posters of some island.
Under our igloo skies the frozen mind
Holds to one truth: it is gray, and called Rochester.

No island fantasy survives Rochester,
Where to the natives destiny is snow
That is neither to our mind nor of our making.

I think that illustrates what I meant by echoes and repetition within the lines much better than any attempts at analysis on my part. And this SGA sestina of your has a similar feel -- the echoes of the ocean work in the same way as the spices and the gray of old snow in Hecht's poem. I think what makes Hecht's work so well is the way the exotic fantasy words run counter to the dreary, dull words for weather -- it gives me such a strong longing to be anywhere but in the slushy cold of Rochester! And yet Rochester feels like such a familiar place by the end of the poem -- I've been to the equivalent of Rochester and yearned to be anywhere else.

I get a similar feeling with the word "anchor" when John's on Earth, and relying on his team for a sense of home. I've been there too -- feeling rootless and adrift, sometimes literally homeless (while moving or travelling) and anchored by the people I love.

And I'll shut up now. My point is just that I think you're getting really good.

ETA: to fix typos, and add that I got the poem from The Norton Anthology of Poetry.