The NEWMAN SESTINA is a challenging, yet humorously absurd type of poem that uses six anagrams as the end words. In other words, words like: scared and sacred, but with all six as anagrams. There are only the six end words, as with a normal sestina.

Also like the normal sestina, the newman sestina consists of six six-line stanzas and a three-line envoy.


Example by Bob Newman:

excerpt from Rambling in Tresco A Scilly sestina

Last Wednesday there were questions in the Cortes
From Miguel Martinez, MP and coster,
Concerning an endangered fowl, the scoter,
Much traded in the thriving private sector,
Delicious roasted in a bacon corset,
A dish so prized it merits an armed escort.

Martinez left for home in his Ford Escort.
Alas, he’ll speak no more before the Cortes,
For Semtex slyly planted in his corset
Was detonated by another coster
With interests in the wildfowl trading sector,
A specialist in ptarmigan and scoter.