Given Sandra’s reflections on sestinas in her earlier post, I thought the following quotes from Jules Nyquist on James Cummins in “Fame and the Lonesome Sestina“ might be appropriate: 

Sestinas can mock you.  It is partly about the meter, the sound, the word repetition, but it’s also much more about how the poet handles the form itself to make it interesting, to use the form to its best advantage. James Cummins says: ’The sestina has everything to do with whether or not you can get said what you thought you wanted to say, as you find out what it is you can say.’

He also says, ‘A hundred sestinas must die, so that one may live’, which I personally relate to.
Cummins says writing in the sestina form is ‘humiliating.’  He has a wonderful sense of humor about the writing process and as a result his sestinas have a playful quality about them.
   
He says,  ’The sestina resists your choosing it as the appropriate vehicle for your material; it laughs at the whole process that puts composing words in a box. Because the sestina doesn’t fit these ideas, people who need the notion of ‘mastery’ find the sestina odd and confusing.’

It’s an embarrassment to formalists.

Personally, I have to agree with that last sentiment. I’ve blushed at every sestina I’ve tried, but there are some formalists there who are crazy enough to brave the sestina for the rest of us: for example, Sandra Beasley. Read one like “Sestina Inviting My Sister to Become a Pirate” and then I dare you to accuse me of flattery.

However, if you’re up for an old favorite, check out “The Shrinking Lonesome Sestina” by Miller Williams, or for a good time call on McSweeney’s and their collection of sestinas. Personally, I’d recommend “Get To School (A Sestina)”, especially if “you read poetry as fast as a running cheetah.”