The Expansion Sestina These instructions will expand a sestina form poem from within a single word as follows: Choose a five-letter Source Word. Choose six line-ending letters and order them from one to six. Pair up the line ending words as follows into pairs of first and last letters: Line ending Word First letter Last letter Word 1 6[th] 1st Word 2 5[th] 2nd Word 3 2[nd] 3rd Word 4 4[th] 4th Word 5 3[rd] 5th Word 6 1[st] 6th Assemble line-ending words from the conditions arrayed in the above table. The first line ending word must be six letters long, though all subsequent words may be of any length. Expand the source word tautogrammatically to produce the first line. Each word in this line must be six letters long and must each end with the first letter of each line ending word in their original order. Expand each word in the line that has just been produced in the same tautogrammatic manner in order of their appearance. Each line must be six words long. The end letters of each word must be the first letter of each line-ending word. Since each of these five lines will produce the next stanzas in the sestina, the ordering of word-ending letters must be the same as the ordering of the line-ending words in each subsequent stanza. The following diagram will clarify this situation: Line End Letter Sequence 1 [produced from first expansion] [1-itself]23456 2 615243 3 364125 4 532614 5 451362 6 246531 Once this first stanza is assembled, expand each new line into the five further stanzas tautogrammatically. In this operation, each word becomes one line of each stanza. Once this is complete, the tercet will be a straight repetition of the sestina's first three lines. This can be combined with a syllabic or word-amount constraint. Alexandrines and a limitation to 6 words per line are two examples which come to mind at the moment. The title must follow the following form: "Expanding on a(n) [INSERT SOURCE WORD HERE] Sestina" The following is an example: BORED 1: DenseR 2: GentlY 3: YawnS 4: EavE 5: SmoothinG 6: RoaD Expanding on a Bored Sestina Boring[2] oddity[3], rebate[4] ejects[5] denser[6] [LINE 1] Blister[6] old[1] rhizomes[5] illustrating[2] noise[4] gently[3] Ordinary[3] dinner[6] done[4], ingrained[1] threading[2] yawns[5] Rests[5] every[3] bearing[2] after[6] tested[1] eave[4] Emote[4] joke's[5] end[1], crazy[3] tear[6] smoothing[2] Dancing[2] elsewhere[4], never[6] senses[5] every[3] road[1] [LINE 2] Brush last ink, support trim-edged road Overlooking lushness, denser Rehashing half-irritated zones of movement, elsewhere smoothing Irate lone lines under some test, related as these insomniac noises gently Nothing on its steel eave Gleaned emotions notate the last yawns [LINE3] On rare days it never abates, rotates, yawns Driving if nothing neared road Dripping over no eave If noises get rehashed an iron node ends denser The hefty reading eased as doubles idling, nodding gently Yesterday, a window neared smoothing [LINE 4] Resting erratically, something tried smoothing Easing various elements, rough yawns But, early aches rehash into nothing gently After former end's road The extra silt tends errors, denser Elsewhere, a versatile eave [LINE 5] Erratically masked over the Eave Just one keeps easily smoothing Ends never denser Curled rhizomes after zone yawns The empty altered road Strange moments of other things hover in noise gently [LINE 6] Drab acting needs cropping in notes gently Every last supporting entrance was here, equally rusted eave Negate early vaunts erasing road So, every night simple effortless smoothing Eunoia visits, every relay yawns Reruns offer actions, denser [TERCET - REPETITION] Boring oddity, rebate ejects denser Blister old rhizomes illustrating noise gently Ordinary dinner done, ingrained threading yawns