Sestina

What is the best response to tragic loss? In "Sestina" (1956) by Elizabeth Bishop, a grandmother and granddaughter respond to loss in drastically different ways. Although it helps them cope, their different approaches lead to emotional isolation and a disconnect between the two of them. Invoking the repetitive nature of a sestina to stress certain images and ideas, Bishop's "Sestina" examines themes like grief and loss, the home and family, and emotional isolation.

"Sestina" At a Glance

"Sestina" Poem by Elizabeth Bishop

American poet and short story writer Elizabeth Bishop was born in 1911. Her childhood was characterized by loss, instability, and health issues. Her father died before she turned one, her mother was institutionalized for mental illness before Bishop's fifth birthday, and young Bishop was sent to live first with one set of grandparents, then the other, and then her aunt, all before her teenage years. In short, Bishop had first hand experience with loss, death, and isolation.

In contrast to the confessional poetry of Bishop's peers, the speaker, characters, and poet are all completely separate in "Sestina." In confessional poetry, the poet is often reflected in the speaker and is able to work through intimate details of their life in the poem. Bishop's poetry, on the contrary, is objective and distant. Although the poem's themes are influenced by Bishop's personal life (i.e., the loss and isolation) and perhaps the scene itself is taken straight out of Bishop's childhood (a grandmother and granddaughter having tea), the speaker is removed from the characters. Instead of diving into their feelings, the speaker merely observes what is happening in the house.

Fig. 1 - Although the poem is influenced by Bishop's experience being raised by her grandparents, the poem itself is objective, not confessional.

"Sestina" was first published in the print edition of the September 15, 1956 issue of the New Yorker. It was later republished in Bishop's 1965 collection Questions of Travel.

Sestina Format

The title of the poem also speaks to its form. The work "sestina" comes from the Italian word “sexto,” meaning sixth. The poem is broken into six stanzas that are six lines each and ends with a short, three-line stanza called an envoi, envoy, tercet, or tornada. In total, the poem is 39 lines and seven stanzas long.

Sestina is a unique, fixed form of poetry. The end word of each stanza becomes the end word of the first line in the next stanza. All of the words at the end of the lines in the first stanza repeat and cycle through the entirety of the poem. This creates a sense of unity between the stanzas and allows the speaker to repeatedly return to previous ideas and expand upon them. Here the words house, grandmother, child, stove, almanac, and tears are repeated as end words throughout.

The sestina format creates a natural pathway for specific ideas to expand and evolve. Consider the house: at first, the house merely refers to the physical location that the grandmother and grandchild inhibit. As the story progresses, though, inanimate objects dance and beat on the roof, adding a mystical element to the house through personification. At the end of the poem, the drawing of a house represents the child's understanding of home. The imagery, connotations, and idea of house evolved throughout the poem.

Sestinas typically do not rhyme, but the intricate repetition of select words creates an internal rhythm.

"Sestina" Text

"Sestina" Poem Summary

"Sestina" contrasts harsh reality with childhood fantasy and escapism. A grandmother and granddaughter are having tea and reading the almanac, an annual publication listing current information on things like the weather, planting dates for farmers, tide tables, and astronomical data.

As they read the almanac, they make jokes and laugh together. But the happiness of the scene is overshadowed by the grandmother's grief. She is only laughing and distracting herself to hide her tears. She thinks that her grief must have been foretold by the almanac and linked to the season.

Meanwhile, the granddaughter is fascinated by the condensation on the teapot and gets lost in her own world. She draws a house and a man and shows it to her grandmother who does not acknowledge it. The grandmother tends to the stove and the granddaughter sees moons falling from the almanac into the flower garden in her drawing. The almanac speaks to the child while the grandmother sings. The granddaughter continues drawing "inscrutable" houses.

"Sestina" Poem Analysis

Bishop uses many literary devices to create the juxtaposition between the outwardly peaceful scene and the emotional turmoil that the characters experience individually. The main literary devices are epistrophe, personification, anthropomorphism, simile, and alliteration. The use of strong imagery and personification also contributes to the contrast between the fantasy world that the child escapes to and the reality of living with loss.

Epistrophe

Epistrophe is an essential part of the sestina structure, and it also serves to highlight the most important characters and ideas in the poem. Epistrophe is the repetition of the same word or phrase at the end of multiple lines. It highlights an idea by enhancing and expanding on the subject matter throughout each stanza while also creating unity between the stanzas. Epistrophe is apparent in the words house, grandmother, child, stove, almanac, and tears. Every line ends with one of those six words, stressing the relationship and intersections between them.

Personification and Anthropomorphism

Although tears are generally negative, dance is a positive verb full of vitality and happiness. But whether positive or negative, the personification still makes the inanimate objects seem more full of life than their human counterparts.

Fig. 2 - The child is fascinated by the tea kettle and its condensation, which she thinks of as "tears."

The teakettle, almanac, and stove interact with one another and with the grandmother and granddaughter more often than the two humans interact with each other, also showing how isolated they feel. For example, even though there is no actual dialogue between the grandmother and child, the stove and almanac talk:

Finally, the personification of the objects creates the fantastical world that the granddaughter escapes into when she feels disconnected from her grandmother. When the grandmother retreats into her grief, the "clever" almanac tells the child it is "Time to plant tears" (18, 37). Because the grandmother isolates herself from her grandchild, the only way the child can relate to grief is through personification, making it more of an active external experience than an internal one. And, of course, planting requires burying a seed out of sight and waiting for it to grow into something beautiful or usable. The grandmother attempts to bury her grief; maybe the child is waiting for it to grow and bloom again.

Caesura

Caesura creates a break in the middle of line 13:

In addition to controlling the rhythm by creating a stopping point, caesura also shows the disconnect between the child and the grandmother. The grandmother distracts herself by focusing on the actual things in front of her. She busies herself by adding wood to the stove, cutting bread, and laughing at the almanac. But while the grandmother preoccupies her mind with facts to avoid her grief, the child lives with her feelings. The granddaughter escapes to a fantasy world where teakettles can cry and almanacs can talk, but those places are controlled by feelings. There is a disconnect between the grandmother and granddaughter because one attempts to ignore her feelings and the other actively addresses them.

Simile

Though not as explicit as personification, simile also makes the inanimate objects an active force by comparing them to living things and actions. In lines 19-21, the speaker notes,

Like a bird hovering above the ground, the half-open almanac is full of potential. Although the grandmother has put it away, the almanac is still a continuous force in the poem and the characters aren't really done with it.

Fig. 3 - The almanac is compared to a bird hovering in flight through simile.

Simile later contributes to the fantastical element of the poem when "little moons fall down like tears" (33), comparing moons to the human action of crying, making them as prolific and emotional as tears.

Metaphor

Metaphor is only used once to describe the grandmother with "her teacup full of dark brown tears" (22). The grandmother was making tea, which is probably what the teacup is literally full of. However, the grandmother also uses actions like making tea to distract her from her own pain, so the dark brown tears are her feelings of sorrow that she drowns by busying herself with every day actions.

Alliteration

Alliteration creates an internal rhythm, stresses certain words over others, and makes the poem more interesting to read by repeating certain sounds. Most of the alliteration in the poem centers on the repetition of the letter "T." Consider: "talking to hide her tears" (6), "time for tea" (13), "teakettle's small hard tears" (14), and "Time to plant tears" (37). The repeated "T" sounds like the rain tapping on the roof of the house, reminding readers of the setting (a rainy evening in September) while also conveying the sense of sorrow and melancholy associated with rain.

"Sestina" Poem Themes

The major themes of the poem are revealed in how the grandmother and grandchild relate to each other and the inanimate things around them. The differences in how the two handle grief leaves them feeling isolated and alone, even in the setting of their home.

The Home and Family

In this poem about a disconnected family, the things the grandmother and child don't say to one another are even more important than the things they do say. The disconnect and dour mood of the poem is set from the first stanza:

This is the only time in the poem when the grandmother and granddaughter are actually connecting, and even here their laughter is overshadowed by the gloominess of the "failing light" and the grandmother's tears. The grandmother's happiness (and, by association, this moment of connection with her granddaughter) is a front. Instead of genuinely interacting with the child, the grandmother hides her pain and her true feelings. From the very first stanza, false pretenses and secrets dominate this family's relationship.

The child is not oblivious to the distance between herself and her grandmother: "With crayons the child draws a rigid house" (27). Instead of being warm and inviting, the house the child draws is stiff and unfeeling, most likely reflecting her perception of her own home. The rigid house is emotionally cold, while the real house is physically cold: the grandmother "shivers and says she thinks the house / feels chilly, and puts more wood in the stove" (23-24). Throughout the poem, the grandmother and child seem incredibly distant from one another due to their secrets and inability to be emotionally vulnerable to one another. The child continuously draws pictures of imaginary houses to mirror her lack of feeling at home.

Emotional Isolation and Solitude

The family suffers from a lack of connection, stemming from the grandmother's emotional isolation from her granddaughter. Not only does she hide her tears, she also feels as though no one else in the world would understand what she is going through, her pain "only known to a grandmother" (10). This feeling of isolation has led her to emotional solitude. Although she is physically present with her family, she is alone emotionally. Even the child feels alone, which causes her to retreat to her imaginary world. The speaker says,

This is a secret that the child does not share with the grandmother; the girl's world is hers alone.

Loss and Grief

The poem is dominated by the loss that is only hinted at. Both characters feel a sense of loss, but they deal with it differently. The grandmother believes it is something that she was destined for:

And because she thinks of grief as a fated occurrence, the grandmother attempts to run from it instead of addressing it. Readers don't even know what has caused the grandmother's tears, as she is so focused on avoiding them altogether. The only hint readers get comes from the way the child addresses loss. After drawing the house which presumably models their own,

The man is presumably the one causing both the grandmother and the child grief. Perhaps it is the child's brother, father, or grandfather. Who he is doesn't matter as much as how his absence has brought them grief and emotional isolation.