Analysis Of The Poem Sestina

In the poem “Sestina,” the author, Elizabeth Bishop, depicts a painful story of a grandmother and a child living with loss. Most readers who have some knowledge of Bishop's biography would assume that the poem reflects the time in her childhood when she lived in Nova Scotia, after her mother had been committed to an asylum (Sanger 47). The story begins in a kitchen on a rainy afternoon in September, with both the grandmother and the child having tea and reading the almanac. While the grandmother tries to remain cheerful and “protect” the child, she fails as her tears give away her sadness (Bishop 1-12). The grandmother was portrayed as the “protector” of the child to keep the child busy and distracted from the tragedy that obviously had taken
The poem is the epitome of the way that family members share long-buried sorrows, who try to simultaneously hide and reveal what they know of themselves and of each other (Rogers 1). The reader "understands" the sadness without "knowing" its source. This tension that the poem produces in readers between understanding (emotion) and knowing (the story) leaves the reader intrigued (Rogers 1). In stanza five she brings the stove and almanac to life. “It was to be,” says the Marvel Stove. “I know what I know,” says the almanac. An almanac offers knowledge on weather history, long-range forecasts, sunrises, sunsets, full moons, lunar phases and etc. The stove and almanac know something that the grandmother and child don’t. The almanac was hung to hover over the room. Without recognizing the setting, diction and figurative language present in Elizabeth Bishop’s “Sestina”, it would be hard for the reader to understand the author’s meaning and tone of the poem. With the setting, diction and figurative language, the reader recognizes the tone to be kind of gloomy, or somber. The powerful meaning that is discovered throughout all of the poem can be referred to the grief and sadness that one may experience after a death, but yet there is still is sense of restoration. The reason for Elizabeth Bishop’s decision to title her poem after the form it was written in was to provide the reader with an understanding of how a child sees the world. A child rearranges things until everything makes sense, which in turn is the way the words are rearranged over and over again in the poem. The reader is trying to make sense of what is going on, but at the same time, understanding the true meaning of the poem is