What is a sestet?
A six-line stanza in poetry.
Sestet: The Perfectly Balanced Six-Line Stanza
Ah, the sestet, a stanza as balanced as it is beautiful.
A sestet is a six-line stanza in poetry, often following an octave (a stanza of eight lines) in a sonnet or other types of poem with a specific rhyme scheme.
Due to its shorter length, a sestet can carry a punchy impact or serve as a resolution to the more expansive octave.
The sestet opens up new opportunities for poets, with its small size but powerful nature allowing for a wide range of experimentation and exploration.
Sestets can also be combined with each other or vary in their rhyme schemes to add complexity or diversity to a poem.
So next time you're writing a sonnet or other form of poetry, consider the perfectly balanced and versatile sestet to help bring your poem to its poetic peak!
Here are two examples of famous sestets used in literature:
Shakespeare's sonnet 29 features a sestet with the rhyme scheme CDAECE.
For thy sweet love rememb'red such wealth brings, That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
Robert Frost's iconic poem The Road Not Taken features a sestet with the rhyme scheme ABAAB.
I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.