The Incredible Sestina Anthology
The Incredible Sestina Anthology (TISA) is a celebration of one of poetry's most intricate and rewarding forms. Edited by Daniel Nester, the collection brings together a wide range of contemporary voices who have taken up the sestina's thirty-nine-line challenge and made it their own.
The sestina — a form built on six end-words that rotate through six stanzas before converging in a three-line envoi — has captivated poets for centuries. TISA gathers work from both established and emerging writers, showcasing the form's surprising flexibility and enduring appeal.
Editorial Vision
Daniel Nester set out to compile an anthology that reflects the sestina's range — from the meditative to the mischievous, the formal to the experimental. The book includes contributors such as Rick Moody, Carl Phillips, Kent Johnson, Brian Henry, Jonah Winter, Nate Marshall, Erika Dreifus, Victor D. Infante, and Kolleen Carney, among many others.
Beyond the poems themselves, the project has sparked readings, interviews, and community challenges — including a MassPo Challenge Sestina that invited poets to write using end-words contributed by festival readers.
About the Editor
Daniel Nester is a writer, editor, and poet whose work has appeared widely. His editorial approach for TISA balances reverence for the sestina tradition with a keen eye for work that pushes the form in new directions. Alexandra Korcz has also contributed to the editorial side of the project.
The anthology launched with a reading at Nick's Bar and Restaurant in Worcester, MA, and has since been featured at festivals and reading series across the Northeast. Press coverage has appeared in the New York Times, the Albany Times Union, American Book Review, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and Geekadelphia.