Editing Sestina (section)

==Effect==
The structure of the sestina, which demands adherence to a strict and arbitrary order, produces several effects within a poem. [[Stephanie Burt]] notes that, "The sestina has served, historically, as a complaint", its harsh demands acting as "signs for deprivation or duress".<ref name="Burt 2007, p. 219" /> The structure can enhance the subject matter that it orders; in reference to [[Elizabeth Bishop]]'s ''A Miracle for Breakfast'', David Caplan suggests that the form's "harshly arbitrary demands echo its subject's".<ref name="Caplan 2006 p. 23">Caplan 2006, p. 23</ref> Nevertheless, the form's structure has been criticised; [[Paul Fussell]] considers the sestina to be of "dubious structural expressiveness" when composed in English and, irrespective of how it is used, "would seem to be [a form] that gives more structural pleasure to the contriver than to the apprehender".<ref name="Fussell 1979, p. 145">Fussell 1979, p. 145</ref>

Margaret Spanos highlights "a number of corresponding levels of tension and resolution" resulting from the structural form, including: structural, [[Semantics|semantic]] and [[Aesthetics|aesthetic]] tensions.<ref name="Spanos 1978, p. 551">Spanos 1987, p. 551</ref> She believes that the aesthetic tension, which results from the "''conception'' of its mathematical completeness and perfection", set against the "''experiences'' of its labyrinthine complexities" can be resolved in the apprehension of the "harmony of the whole".<ref name="Spanos 1978, p. 551" />

The strength of the sestina, according to [[Stephen Fry]], is the "repetition and recycling of elusive patterns that cannot be quite held in the mind all at once".<ref name="Fry 2007, p. 238">Fry 2007, p. 238</ref> For [[Shanna Compton]], these patterns are easily discernible by newcomers to the form; she says that: "Even someone unfamiliar with the form's rules can tell by the end of the second stanza&nbsp;... what's going on&nbsp;...".<ref name="Burt 2007, p. 226">Burt 2007, p. 226</ref>