I hate sestinas! I really do. Believe me, I am usually not one
for mad outbursts for their own sake. I know others do just to
further their own agenda, but I bet there are at least two, no three,
other people in this class who feel the same way as me and it is for
these kinsmen I proceed. Hopefully, I’ll get a head nod or a high-five
for expressing what we feel. We could have a secret party in room 206.
I’ll check if that room is open at five o’clock or ten after six.
We could sit around with sestina-hating grins on our faces, everyone
of us laughing and eating pizza and cake and talking about the five
people we may or may not actually meet in heaven, and just to
be silly or mean we could make up a bunch of funny anti-sestinas for
snotty literary journals. I can see it now: McSweeney’s, volume 5, issue 3!
It’d be perfect, though far-fetched. First, I’m not even sure three
of the finest writers in our class could get published by the sicks
who run those publications. Secondly, what would it really be for?
I’m no idealist and not one to back down, but I’m not sure what any one
of us would really be proving other than it’s easy to
be spiteful (though it’s not like we’d be breaking commandment number five).
Sestinas are the math of English, and on my last algebra test I only got a 55.
I hate Pythagoras and as far as I’m concerned he can take his three
sides and stick them up his #@%$. I don’t mean to be obtuse but to
me it’d be better to take all math and condense it into one number: 86 —
as in finito, nada, gone, finished, done with it! In fact, I defy anyone
to come up with a more excruciatingly boring way to spend your 8 to 4.
But, I digress. It’s not up to me to change the world, or even this class for
that matter. I’m just like everyone else here, taking my four or five
classes. I read my books, listen to my professors and try to be the number one
student in class. I get eight hours of sleep per night and try to study at least three
hours a day (not). That means I have to get out of bed at 6
a.m. just to feel behind all day. I may be sardonic, but I’m a teacher pleaser, too!
I guess I should suck it up and do my master’s bidding. Besides, it’s better to
do something you hate and get an A than to get an F in a class just for
being foolhardy and adolescent, though I’d rather watch paint dry or clean a six-
storey building than write a sestina. I guess before class I can take a four- or five-
minute nap and dream about pizzas, cakes, anti-sestinas and the other three
people in my class (at least that!) I know hate sestinas just as much as this one!
People who are assumed to also hate sestinas (3) + myself (1) / total (4) = X or 1.
Total from line one (1) + total of sestina haters assumed and known (3) = 4 – X = 3.
Divide by 6. Convert total (1/2) using poetry math or sestina and the only possible answer is 5.
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