Starting into the largest chapter of De Andrade (2022), “Measuring Humanity”, which begins with an invitation to read, and listen to the podcast on, Elizabeth Bishop’s Sestina, which word is both the title and form of the poem.
I was struck by the elegance of this structure for a poem — so I thought I’d try it for myself. I chose six words related to the vision for my current research into the use of audio pedagogy: listen, silence, imagery, understand, resonate, and voice. Using the strict format rules for how the words must appear at the end of each line of the six-verse poem and in the final envoi, I came up with my own sestina (from the Italian for six).
As you prepare to listen take time to hear the silence and focus on whatever mental imagery may help you begin to understand feel those things that resonate the prose, the music, the voice. Take notice of that voice be concious of how you listen. Do somehow things resonate as they step into your silence? May you find something to understand that was hidden in the imagery the different forms of imagery of taste, and touch, and voice that only you can understand. To which you alone can listen as they penetrate your silence. Nothing may resonate. Yet everything may resonate in a cacophony of imagery that banishes all silence drowning every voice. If you could only listen you may learn to understand. Things that you must understand if you are going to resonate with others who want you to listen who want to show you imagery and tell you with their own voice instead of the usual silence. That awful deadly silence that nobody will understand because they fill it with their own voice that will crush and resonate obscuring all imagery if they would only listen. Please hear my voice in the silence make the effort to listen and understand so you can resonate with my imagery.
Andrade, Marisa De. 2022. Public Health, Humanities and Magical Realism. Public Health, Humanities and Magical Realism. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003196488.