What are good topics/words to use for a Sestina?

[anonymous]

Hey guys so I have to write a Sestina...

What are easy topics to write about?
And if you choose a topic what are the 6 words that I can repeat?

[synopsis]

Write a poem about watching TV: channel, timeslot, bored, set-top, wand, perspicacity.

[nemesis]

It's often a good idea to choose words that have multiple definitions, and/or that can be used as different parts of speech (such as synopsis's suggestion of "channel," which can be a noun -- meaning a TV station or a nautical highway -- or a verb, again with multiple meanings of its own).

William Meredith wrote a brilliant sestina in which he does not use the same words over and over, but in each stanza he changes one or two of the end-words to words that are synonyms for them. Sometimes the synonym-ness is very distant. But it keeps the sestina very interesting. The title is "The Jain Bird Hospital in Delhi," referring to the Jain religion from India, which attempts to protect all living things. There's a copyright-authorized copy of it available at http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/171852 .