Hacker employs the sestina, a poetic form with thirty-nine lines and six end words, in both “Forage Sestina” and “Towards Autumn.”

As a sestina, “Towards Autumn” contains thirty-nine lines and six end words—in this case, daughter, friend, bread, mother, lover, and myself—that alternate in a set pattern.

The thirty-nine-line sestina form uses the words daughter, friend, bread, mother, lover, and myself, which are found in the poem “Forage Sestina.”

Hacker has used the sestina form multiple times, as in “Towards Autumn,” which contains these six words: words, structure, wire, beam, wall, and room.