Sestina by Elizabeth Bishop

Every person deals with death and grief in a different, whether through revisiting the past, reminiscing over what could have been, or other coping mechanisms. In her poem, “Sestina,” Elizabeth Bishop portrays a grandmother and a child grieving on the anniversary of a close family member. Through her use of the sestina poem style, diction, and personification, Bishop creates a mournful tone where the grandmother and child reflect on the past and the death of a loved one.

Bishop utilized the sestina style for her poem. Sestina poems have six line stanzas that all end in the same words, which in this case are “house,” “grandmother,” “child,” “stove,” “almanac,” and “tears.” Then, in the final stanza, she uses two of the words per line. By choosing to repeat “child” and “grandmother,” Bishop establishes the main subjects of her poem. Bishop not only repeats “stove” and “almanac,” but she also personifies them throughout the poem. At one point, the almanac and the stove speak to the grandmother, stating, “It was to be, says the Marvel Stove. I know what I know, says the almanac” (lines 25-26), and, “Time to plant tears, says the almanac” (line 37).  In the poem, the grandmother appears to be mourning the death of a loved one on the anniversary of their death, and the stove and the almanac could represent the person she loved. If it were the anniversary of a loved one’s death, the grandmother may choose to reminisce over objects that the loved one cherished since the grandmother may link the two together in her mind. The almanac and the stove may also be personified since they represent the person who died.

Through Bishop’s word choice, the poem has a mournful tone, which then turns more hopeful towards the end. In the very beginning of the poem, the grandmother is “laughing and talking to hide her tears” (line 6) which portrays the grandmother as so sad that she has to work hard to her tears from the child. Bishop also describes the grandmother’s tears as “equinoctial tears” (line 7). By using the term “equinoctial,” the speaker establishes that these tears fall annually on the anniversary of the grandmother’s loved one’s death. The speaker continues to establish a mournful tone by describing the grandmother’s “teacup full of dark brown tears” (line 22) and how she “shivers and says she thinks the house feels chilly” (lines 23-24). These lines express the grandmother’s deep sadness on the day since she is crying enough to fill up her teacup and she shivers, which creates a dreary tone. However, in the final stanza, the tone seems to shift. In the first line of the last stanza the almanac says that it is “time to plant tears.” Even though tears represent sadness, the almanac introduces hope by saying that the grandmother and child should “plant tears” because planting seeds introduces new life into the world and the hope for this plant. After this, the grandmother begins to sing and the child begins to draw, so even though the grandmother and child were sad and mourning earlier in the poem, they can move past the mourning and continue with their lives and not are not forever stuck in a hopeless pattern.

In “Sestina,” Elizabeth Bishop tells the story of a grandmother and child on a day of mourning through a use of personification and specific word choice. Even though the tone of the poem begins as dreary and mournful, there is a tone shift towards the end that shows the grandmother and child moving on and becoming hopeful again.