The Sextilla

[Tinker]

Explore the Craft of Writing Poetry
Spanish Verse

The Sextilla or sextuplet is originally a Galacian-Portuguese stanzaic form of the 14th century and can be found among the Cantigas with several rhyme variations. However the form as it has developed has now been limited to one of two rhyme schemes. The most famous sextillas are by Spanish poet Jorge Manrique Verses by the Death of His Father in 80 stanzas.

The elements of the Sextilla are:

1. stanzaic, written in any number of sixains.
2. syllabic, most often 8 syllables per line, but sometimes less. (remember in Spanish prosody the syllable count really depends on where the last accented syllable falls, so a 7 syllable or a 9 syllable line can both be counted as 8 syllables.)
3. rhymed, either aabccb or ababcc (When rhymed in the later scheme it is sometimes called a sestina. This should not to be confused with the more popular, French Sestina in which end words are repeated in lexical order).