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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=460466" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>0020 A loving sestina to Our Lady</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=460466" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">1 In Europe, around the end of the 12th century, women<br>2 began to be regarded by men as more than a good lay<br>3 and mother to your children; but that contented sorta love<br>4 that even men feel afterward, could be seen as quite divine<br>5 and thus related however distantly to the Creator; <br>6 this gave rise to a type of poetry called the sestina.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=460466" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">6 a troubadour called Arnaut Daniel invented the sestina, <br>1 so it’s said, around 1190; and this new respect for women<br>5 as being, believe it or not, related distantly to their Creator<br>2 led to this, to us, rather absurd and complicated ‘lay’ -<br>4 that was the rather double-entendre name for the divine<br>3 love for mankind related to the act of physical love</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=460466" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">3 which, though we make this a common metaphor for love<br>6 today, was new then, to unreconstructed men; the sestina<br>4 which plugs the same six end-words throughout, divine<br>1 and human, was supposed to underline that women, <br>2 exquisitely praised in the poetry of the troubadour’s lay, <br>5 were men’s path to loving, through them, his Creator; </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=460466" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">5 Creator of man and woman, Adam and Eve; Creator<br>3 of all things and of, crucially, both human and divine love<br>2 and this point was hammered home; the troubadour’s lay<br>6 in this somewhat tiresome form of the sestina<br>1 was supposed to make men respectful, and women<br>4 feel good about themselves (like Maya) as being divine; </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=460466" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">4 but of course, troubadours were also human and divine<br>5 musicians; sexy and available (OK, blame their Creator…) <br>1 and, it was envied, did their own share of loving women<br>3 while going from castle to castle, gig to gig, love to love; <br>6 which gave rather a double edge to their sung sestina<br>2 and prompted many a coarse joke about ‘a good lay’..</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=460466" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">2 however, poets - Dante, Petrarch - found the lay <br>4 a way of linking human love and the divine; <br>6 a profound metaphor, in a fine, poetic sestina, <br>5 that love in all its forms is the very nature of the Creator<br>3 and that we should remember this while making love<br>1 and perhaps have rather more respect for women..</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=460466" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Envoi: <br>5 I hope that this sestina has made its point: the Creator<br>3 is Love; Love is the Creator; and for most of us, this love<br>1 arises from, let’s say, a very poetic lay; with women.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><a href="http://poems.citatepedia.com/">poem</a> by <strong><a rel="author" href="http://authors.citatepedia.com/by.php?a=Michael+Shepherd">Michael Shepherd</a></strong></div>