How I Finally Wrote a Sestina, and Why

Forgive the clickbait. I will get to the “How I Wrote a Sestina” part of the title soon, I promise, but I actually want to start with the “Why.”

As I wrote over on my Substack recently, I had some big news to share in August, the biggest of which was being awarded a Literary Fellowship in Poetry from the Mississippi Arts Commission. I’ve extremely grateful to them for this honor, and I wrote about the ways I’m planning to use the funds that come with it. One way is to up my submission game, and to do that, I’ve been working on my SubTracker database.

I have a few kinks to work out and school is starting, so there won’t be time to post an update right away, but eventually, I will. I’ve been working on two improvements that will help me submit to more magazines this year.

One is a way to track my fees. For a long time, I had a system for tracking expenses and income along with my submissions, but when that old submission system went by the wayside and I ported it to Open Office (or LibreOffice), I didn’t bring in the expenses/income part. I did export all my old data, but since I wasn’t keeping track of all the $3-$5 submission fees and other expenses weren’t very much, I could keep up with it in a spreadsheet. Now that I want to track my submission spending, I needed a way to manage it more easily. And with a recent book out, I also had more need for tracking income, so it made sense to bring these spreadsheets into the database and create a way to view them. I’d been working on that, but the fellowship and the goal to submit more, even to markets that charge fees, gave me the push I needed to finish it.

The other side of submitting more is keeping track of reading periods. I have a way to track deadlines in the database, but I don’t have a good way to see what reading periods are about to open or to see other reminders I might want to give myself. I’ve been relying on my normal Reminders app for this, but I don’t want to clog it up with a ton of notices about submissions.

So I created a database table for reminders, where I can put a date, the name of the place it is associated with, and a brief description. That way, when I find a place I’d like to submit to but that isn’t open, I can add them to the reminder table so I won’t forget. I’d like to integerate both the reminders and the fees on the Places form, and I need to make sure they’re working the way I want them to before I make them public.

And that finally brings me to why and how I finished a sestina.

You see, I got an email reminder over the weekend from a magazine I’ve submitted to previously that they are opening for submissions. They take up to 10 pages of poems and like to see several related poems. I had a series of poems I wanted to submit, and I had a draft sestina that went with the series, so if I could only get that ready, I’d be closer to the number of pages they prefer.

The sestina is a form that I’ve contemplated writing for years. It seems so simple and yet is maddeningly complex. You just need a stanza of six lines, then you take the ending words of those lines and repeat them as the ending words of the next five stanzas with the pattern being that you take the last final word of the previous stanza as the final word of the first line of the new stanza, then the first line’s final word becomes the final word of the second line of the new stanza, followed by the final word of the fifth line, the second line, the fourth line, and the third line. Easy, right?

A few months ago, I had an idea for a sestina and managed to write the first stanza. That allowed me to write out the final words for the next stanzas in the pattern: 615243, 364125, 532614, 451362, 246531, and an evoi with 123456 across three lines (two of the words in each line, one at the midpoint and one at the end).

I had managed to get about half to two thirds of the way through the second stanza in about two months. I also took vacation, worked on proofs of A Writer’s Craft two different times, and dealt with one or two other things, occassionally coming back to the sestina and tinkering. I changed my six words a couple of times, but ended up coming back to the ones I had started with.

Then I had a deadline of trying to finish the sestina this weekend, if I could, and even though I should have been working on syllabi for the fall semester that starts tomorrow, it came to me. Not all at once, but I did crack the second stanza, and that gave me ideas for the third and fourth, which led me to a turn in the fifth and sixth, ending with a return to the beginning in the envoi.

Not writing helped me to write the sestina in the end. All these ideas had been brewing, and some things even needed to happen in the world before I could finish the poem.

You see, the problem wasn’t only with the form, though that is daunting — there are 39 lines to juggle, after all, and you have to repeat without sounding repetitious. The bigger problem was with the subject matter, though. I knew I wanted to write about a particular myth, but as I had explored it, I learned I didn’t really like the main character. Often that proves to be the most productive, so I knew I just had to find the right angle in. I’d started finding that in my first stanza, but reached a roadblock and needed to find my way out of the wilderness.

Oddly, it was this summer’s wildfires in Europe and also the western US that gave me the images I needed. That was something completely unrelated to the myth, but the turn I found took me there. The problems I’d struggled with in dealing with the myth led me there. It just took time and several failed attempts to find a way. No attempts are really failed if they show you the dead ends so you can try the winding path that will eventually get you where you need to go.

The other thing that helped me get there was writing in other forms. I’ve been writing more ghazals and pantoums in recent months, and I’m convinced that working with repetition in these forms helped train me to be able to navigate the interweaving patterns of the sestina. They helped me think in less linear ways, which is necessary for writing a form with so much repetition. Echo and resonance are much more important than straightforward logical thinking when writing like this, though you still need to write with standard, linear syntax.

Am I happy with my sestina? Yes. Happy enough to send it off with this batch of submissions, though when it comes back to me or before I send it off again, I will likely tinker with it some more or at least see how it lands with me after I’ve let it stew for awhile. After all, I’m never truly done with a poem until it’s published, but you reach a point where you’re ready to send it out into the world and see where its journey will take it. And now that frees me up to work on other poems.

But first I’ll get back to syllabi and setting up my online course shells, preparing for my first classes, and al lthe other things that mark the start of a new semester.

Looking for a Literary Agent: Be Informed

There are significant changes coming to the world of literary agents that make it harder, especially for new writers, to navigate. As always, Jane Friedman provides a thought-provoking and informative guide.

Before delving into this, I should note that I am a poet and the author of a textbook. I have never had an agent, and generally speaking, don’t earn enough from my books to make me attractive to a literary agent. I’m okay with that. But I also direct a low-residency MFA program, and in that capacity, I’ve long been curious about the world of agents, and Friedman’s The Business of Being A Writer, her newsletter Electric Speed, and her blog have consistently provided excellent information on this and other publishing news.

This month, her top post was “Agent Business Models May Be Shifting: What I Fear Will Happen.” I won’t even try to cover everything she discusses, but let me give a few highlights so those who are thinking about looking for an agent will know why they need to read this.

First, Friedman presents some historical perspective to show why there is cause for concern and why there are now nearly as many people who call themselves literary agents as there are literary editors. She argues this resulted from changes at the American Association of Literary Agents in 2022, which meant that agents no longer had to show they had sold at least 10 titles in the past year to become members. Though broadening the membership base might bring equity for agents who are just starting out, it also has meant a dramatic increase in the number of agents listed and therefore more submissions to editors and more competition in the field. There have also been changes to what the AALA allows member agents to do to earn money, and more changes are coming on September 1, 2026.

Why should you be concerned? Agents can already charge fees to authors they don’t represent for things like editing, though they are required to refund those fees if they then sign to represent the author. That requirement will be loosened, which may make the discussion a little squishier. Does an author who seeks representation really have the ability to demand a refund? Legally, yes, but in practice many might feel pressured to cave. Many more might pay for editing services in hopes of eventually rising to the ranks of the authors the agent represents, even though agents will be required to say that there is no connection between their other services and author representation. There is ample room for abuse, in other words, and even for an agent who is trying to be above-board, authors may still pay for services hoping to get the agent’s attention.

With this in mind, it is all the more important for authors to inform themselves about these changes and about agents and their track records of getting contracts signed for book publication. If there are more agents out there, and if they can earn money selling services and even referring authors to vanity presses or hybrid publishers, then it becomes vital to know who is serious about selling books to publishers and who makes their income with other services. A subscription to Publisher’s Marketplace, where you can get the details of actual contracts with major publishers, may be your only line of defense when AALA membership no longer means what it once did.

There are advantages to the new regulations, and Friedman’s overview is as even-handed as possible. Yet she raises serious concerns about the potential for abuse. If you’re looking for an agent to represent your writing, if you already have one, or even if you are only considering what it would be like to enter that world, you owe it to yourself to read her post and be informed. At the very least, it will give you more things to look out for when researching potential agents.

New Video from Mississippi Book Festival

This is just a quick update about some video links that I’ve found and added to the site.

Recently, the organizers of the Mississippi Book Festival let me know that all panels from 2025 are now online. This means you can now watch the panel I was on, celebrating the publication of Attached to the Living World: A New Ecopoetry Anthology.

This led me to wonder what else might be available, and a quick search led to several other YouTube videos of my readings and interviews. I decided to list these along with my online poems, which was already a page on this site. This list now includes the Eudora Welty Writers’ Symposium, my book launch for Tree Fall with Birdsong, and my first Mississippi Book Festival appearance for Barrier Island Suite from 2016. You can hear more of my poems this way, and see how I’ve aged in the last ten years!

In other news, I’ve been busy putting the finishing touches on our line-up for the 38th annual Eudora Welty Writers’ Symposium. I have all eleven authors confirmed and am now working on the Welty Prize, who will be our twelfth panelist.

I’ve also been hard at work going over the copy editor’s comments for the second edition of A Writer’s Craft. Those are in and I’ve responded to their second round of questions. Next I’ll get page proofs, and maybe a cover proof or choices before too long.

Classes begin in less than a month, so my department chair an teaching responsibilities are also remping up. The summer heat hasn’t subsided, if anything it’s getting hotter, but it feels like summer is nearly over. At least reality is sinking in, but that is a good thing.

Yet Another Writer Scam: Fake PGH Book Fest

Today, I got another scam email targeting writers. This one purported to be from the PGH Book Fest. The email described my book Tree Fall with Birdsong and referenced my “recent work in poetry and translation.” It’s been quite a while since I published any translations, and this sounded a lot like some other AI slop I’ve received in scam emails, so my guard was already up. They also claim to be still reviewing applications for the festival that takes place on May 30. That would be insane.

I searched, and the PGH Book Fest is a real thing. They have also posted a warning on Instagram about reports of fake emails from someone charging a fee to register for the festival. Thanks to the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh who posted the notice about the fake PGH Book Fest emails. It didn’t take me too much searching to find it.

The sender on this email was authors.pittsburghbooklitfest@gmail.com. Does that look suspicious? It should. A) because it’s a gmail account. B) because no one would have thier name as part of their account (rather than as their domain). C) because their domain does not include “booklitfest,” but is “pittsburghbookfestival.org.” D) the email looks like it was AI generated.

I’ll ignore this one and delete the email. But I wanted to write about it because it probably won’t be the last attempt to scam me with a book festival invitation. Be careful when you get these. Check them out before replying, and only reply when all the details line up and you can tell it is a legitimate offer.

I’m sure the real PGH Book Fest is a wonderful event. It’s infuriating that someone would try to scam writers by impersonating them and charging a fee to participate.

Another Bright Spot on a Rainy Day

This morning, I took a few moments to write on Substack about seeing a scarlet tanager and a couple of catbirds, two bright spots on what turned into a rainy day. Tonight, I happened across a review of the reading I did with John Miller at Ernest and Hadley Bookstore back in February. Since that also brightened my day, I thought I’d write about it here.

I took a screen shot from part of the cover image on the review, since I didn’t want to dowload the whole picture. Credit to Lilly Roehrig, who I assume was the photographer for this and two other photos that accompany her piece in Ripple Arts Review, a publication of the University of Alamaba English Department.

Lilly has a very good eye, and a good ear for poetry, and I’m not just saying that because she said nice things about my poems, though that never hurts. This is a well-written piece that examines more than John’s and my poems, but also reads the room and reflects on the writer’s own place in that space. She senses a tension between herself and the rest of the crowd, since she was the youngest person there. I get that, though I hardly noticed the age differences, being just as much of an outsider to the Tuscaloosa poetry scene.

For Lilly, the difference was between the university student and the town; for me the difference was living an hour away. I had the advantage, though, in that I was an invited guest and knew a few people: some former students were there, and I knew John from emails and sharing poems through Poetry South.

What Lilly probably didn’t realize is that many of the people in the room were in a similar boat. I talked to one person who had driven from Jackson, Mississippi, for the reading. He knew John, but probably didn’t know anyone else. One of my former grad students had come in from just the other side of Birmingham, the other is a fairly new PhD student in French who recently moved into Tuscaloosa. I talked to another young man who had come in from out of town and didn’t know either John or me, but had just seen a post about the reading. We might have all looked like we were a group because of the age difference, yet we were not a monolith.

But I get that it’s intimidating to go outside your comfort zone, especially as an undergrad on a campus large enough to be its own city. So kudos to Lilly for making the leap and also for acknowledging that she and her friends should do that more often. Lilly’s take-away from the reading and her own ambivalent feelings of discomfort and anxiety while still being welcomed, is that college students need to seek out more opportunities to interact with the local poetry scene, for as she notes, “excellent poets await you.”

I would add that the local poetry community might also more inviting. Maybe Ernest and Hadley could host a student reading in their space. And maybe they have; as an outsider, I have know way to know. I’m not thinking specifically of the poetry scenes in Tuscaloosa, in other words, but more about all of us. We need to be more willing to get outside of our comfort zones and experience what other people are up to, even when that is unfamiliar or a little intimidating.

For that reason, I also enjoyed reading Lilly’s article about an Eco-Poetry workshop she attended at the Turkey Creek Nature Preserve in Pinson, Alabama near Birmingham. This is another good desecriptive piece about making the leap to get outside of your own community and explore nature (and another community) about an hour away. Again, she dicusses both the poet Erica E. Wade and her own reaction to the workshop and the natural area, including its history and the community activists who stopped the development of a new county jail, turning the area into a nature preserve instead. She compares this successful action to the still ongoing, and so far less successful action against a data center in Bessemer.

Note to Lilly: I happen to know that one of my grad students, who was at the reading that night, is also deeply involved the the fight against the Bessemer data center and has written on it extensively. You had more in common than you realized.

We need more young poets like Lilly who are willing to get outside their comfort zones and explore, whether that is to go to readings in unfamiliar spaces or to drive an hour away to experience and write poetry and learn about the history and the environment of a new place. Maybe we have more of those poets, young and old, than we realize. Maybe we just need to connect with them by doing the same.

Two New Scams Targeting Writers

Actually, I’m not sure these scams are new, but they are new to me, and since people seem to be interested in this kind of thing, I’ll write about them.

I’ve been super busy lately (hence, very few blog posts, sorry!) so my junk mailboxes have really piled up. Tonight I finally got ahead enough that I could take a few minutes to go through them, and as I did, I took note of two scam emails. The first is one I had just read about earlier today: an invitation from a writer friend. Just click the link to find out more!

Of course, it’s not really from my friend who lives in Houston and to the best of my knowledge isn’t visiting. I had read about these fake invitations, and how when you do open the invitaiton, the link might not take you anywhere, but a virus will attack your computer. Or the link takes you somewhere and you’re asked to login, which gives the criminals your email credentials.

If I ever send an invitation from a place like punchbowl, I guess I had better be much more specific before I ask anyone to open my invitation.

The other scam I encoutnered may not be a scam at all, but I suspect it is. The email makes it look like an agent is interested in my book. I write poetry, so I doubt that Amazon optimization is going to help me sell a ton of books. If it did, that’d be great, but it’s probably not worth the investment

One dead giveawaty that this isn’t a real agency is that the address is a gmail address. Now, I have a few gmail accounts, but I dont’ use them for an agency. Then there’s the fact that Lantern Literary claims to represent authors of historical ficion. That’s not who I am.

It’s a shame that these kinds of scams make me mistrust every email from poeple I don’t know and even from people I do know.

Stay safe out there! Don’t click links in email, at least not until you have verified who it is from adn whether you can trust it.

Thanks Again, Elena

I guess you never know how far a post might reach. When I wrote about a scam email I received from a fake Elena Ferrante, I really wasn’t trying to do anything other than report out about a new kind of scam email I received. I didn’t even realize what a big deal Elena Ferrante is or how mysterious she is, though my search on the name had given me some clues. After I posted about it, I saw that she was top on a list at the New York Times. Still, I didn’t think that much about it. I did learn from comments on my post and after reading some more that her identity remains a mystery.

So imagine my surprise when a Google Alert (which usually tells me about posts to this blog that I’ve written or ocassionally alerts me to a review of one of my books) sent me to an article in The Observer, which has a sentence that apparently begins “The writer Lee Goldberg received a similar email, as did Kendall Dunkelberg, a poet and professor, both describing being flattered first and then …” That’s all I can read because there is a 1£ fee for a trial period. If anyone is a subscriber, you can tell me whether the article has anything more about me or my post. For now, I’m more than satisfied to bhe called a poet and professor by The Observer. They’re not wrong, and it goes to show they actually did take a look at my website. And even better, they spelled my name right.

So I can thank Elena Ferrante and her impersonator, both for giving me something to blog about and for getting my little blog noticed across the pond. Other readers have been reading and commenting on the post, so thanks to you, too.

And to all the other obscure bloggers, poets, or professors, and anyone else toiling away with words, keep it up! You never know where your words might land and where that might take you.

New Review of Tree Fall with Birdsong

I usually try to avoid checking places like Amazon and Goodreads for reviews of my books, but recently I was told A Writer’s Craft has 100 reviews on Amazon, which made me curious to go take a look. That number was correct, though most are star ratings and not reviews with text. The ones I saw with written reviews were mostly familiar to me, which is still a happy thing. I just try not to check on that too often because you never know what you’ll find.

That led me down the rabbit hole of looking to see what other reviews are out there: nothing new on Amazon for my poetry collections, though that’s hardly a surprise. That led me to some other book sites with similar results and finally back to GoodReads, where I had a very nice surprise.

Back in January, Tiffanee Mask Jackson took the time to write a long review that starts out with the tag “Gorgeous– a scrapbook of a place I learned to call home” and has a couple more substantive paragraphs. Naturally, I read them, and it made my day, though I’m writing about it not to brag (too much) but also to point out how helpful it is when someone takes the time to write a thoughtful response.

She reads a lot and posts quite a few reviews: some with stars and some with written comments. I’m grateful and honored she took the time to write what she did about my collection of poems.

If you have a book you’ve finished and can take a moment to write even a short paragraph in response, rest assured, the author will be grateful, especially if you liked the book, and so will other readers who will have a much better sense of what they’re about to buy (or check out from their library)!

Now you can go read her review and like it or comment to thank her for me.

MFA Advice for Writers 2026, Pt 4 AI—Just Don’t

As I said at the outset of this series, I want to talk about some things that ought not even need to be said, but then again, maybe they do. AI is one of those topics.

Every MFA program I know of either expressly states that you may not use AI in your writing sample or doesn’t state it outright yet, but also doesn’t want to see AI. Why would anyone who wants a graduate degree in writing even think it might be appropriate to let AI do the writing for you?

Well, there is a lot of hype out there, and that hype does create a fair amount of confusion, so I can see how it could seem like there are some gray areas, but I’m going to say that there really isn’t. Just don’t use AI. Period. That’s your safest strategy.

You might think it’s okay to use AI for spellcheck or grammar check, but it can be a slippery slope from that to allowing an AI tool to suggest ways to revise your writing, which ends up looking like AI wrote your work for you. Just don’t. There are still very good spellcheckers and even grammar checkers that don’t intrude on your writing. It’s fine to let Word underline what it thinks are grammatical or spelling issues, just don’t let it suggest how you should improve that passage — we want to see how you would write it, not how Word or Claude or ChatGPT or Grok would.

You might think it’s okay to use AI to help you come up with topics for your statement of purpose. Just don’t. It will give you topics it has gleaned from the internet, which is full of bad advice. It might even pull a smidgen of that advice from my blog, but it will still be bad advice because it’s filtered through the AI’s algorithms and not through your experience. I want to know about you. I don’t want to know what AI tells you it thinks I want to know. Just don’t. Don’t trust it. Trust yourself. I would much rather read that even if, or maybe especially if, what you want to say goes against all of my expectations.

Besides, AI has already stolen from me by using a pirated copy of one of my books for its training without my permission. Why would I want to see what it thinks you ought to write? Just don’t let it lead you astray.

Most agents and publishers have implemented anti-AI language in their contracts for creative books. Aren’t all books creative? Even a cookbook or a city guide will be suspect if written by AI, and because AI-generated content can’t be copyrighted, even AI-assisted text (beyond basic spellchecking and grammar checking) is essentially worthless to a publisher because they have no copyright protections.

Literary magazines are mostly implementing similar policies. Why should MFA programs treat AI-generated stories, poems, creative nonfiction (I shudder at the thought), or drama any differently? You might think that if you wrote the prompts that caused the output, then you have a claim to the intellectual property. But that’s not how copyright law works, at least not now, so just don’t even think about it.

Now, when I am reading writing samples, I’m actually happy when I see a few typos or grammatical inconsistencies, signs that a fallible human has had a hand in the creation of the text. I haven’t gotten to the point where I distrust every em-dash, but AI’s overreliance on them (which I’m sure will soon be programmed out of the algorithm) is probably a good reason to be extra careful not to overindulge in that habit. I like a good em-dash now and then. Just don’t overdo it—never a good idea.

The more you can do to authentically be yourself, the better. Just don’t be surprised if more MFA programs want to interview applicants before they make their decisions. We haven’t gone that route in my program yet, but it might come to that. I’m always happy to get on a Zoom call with applicants to discuss our program, I just haven’t started to require it or call it an interview.

I know AI companies want you to believe everyone is using it and it is the wave of the future, but that simply isn’t true, not to the extent they want you to believe. It is true that more and more people use it, but it’s also true that we as a society need to figure out what is legitimate use and what isn’t. Creative writers ought to be the ones to figure it out for creative writing, so just don’t let AI companies sell you on the hype. Real writers don’t use it, and you shouldn’t either, especially not when applying for an MFA in Creative Writing.

OK, I’ll get off my soapbox now.

MFA Advice for Writers 2026, Pt 3 Magazines

Last time, I suggested that one way to show what kind of writer you’d like to be is to include a discussion of literary magazines in your statement of purpose or cover letter. Yet it occurs to me that literary magazines have another value for the MFA applicant.

Most programs publish a magazine, so if you are researching programs and trying to get a good idea of the kind of writing they like, you shoudl read their magazine. Most of these magazines are edited by students in the program, so the selections they make about the writers to accept for their magazine will tell a lot about the kind of writers in the program. I often suggest that prospecitve students read back issues of Ponder Review or Poetry South, which are available for free online in our archives. You can tell a lot from the selections we have made.

But you can dig deeper than just the work published. Consider the submission guidelines and the different tiers of rejection notices by looking them up at rejectionwiki.org. We prefer to use the term “decline” or “return” when we don ‘t accept a writer’s work. How a magazine handles this can give you insights into the program’s culture.

Or read a recent masthead to see who the graduate students working on the magazine have been. Then search to see where they’ve published or what they are doing today, especially if you’re looking at an issue from a few years back. In addition to looking up what and where faculty have published, it can be instructive to see where current and former students are active. This take a fair amount of digging, and you might not find everything, but the magazine editors are a great place to start.

Common advice for applicants is to research the faculty at the programs they want to apply to. That’s important because you’re likely to work with those faculty, but it’s equally important to try to get a sense of the students in a program, and the literary magazine may be the best place to learn about them. And if you end up enrolling in that program, one of the most valuable experiences you have may be working on that magazine. Is it run as part of a class or staffed by graduate assistants or volunteers? And if you’re headed to #AWP26, you can see copies of many magazines and even meet some of their staffs at the Book Fair.