A Miracle for Breakfast

“A Miracle for Breakfast” is a sestina by the Pulitzer Prize-winning American poet Elizabeth Bishop. First published in Poetry magazine in 1937 and then in Bishop’s first book of poetry, North & South (1946), the poem reflects Bishop’s keen eye as she provides a nuanced record of a puzzling breakfast. The poem also showcases Bishop’s engagement with complex poetic forms. She uses a sestina to communicate the peculiar breakfast, so the end words in Stanza 1 become the end words—albeit in a different order—in the following stanzas. Although Bishop only published around 100 poems while she was alive, her canon is dynamic. Some of her well-known poems, like the villanelle “One Art” (1976), use traditional poetic forms. Other poems, like “The Fish” (1946), embrace free verse and don’t follow any predetermined patterns or rules. Like most of her poems, “A Miracle for Breakfast” conveys the message that everyday life contains moments of singular wonder. The poem represents her sharp observations and elusive speakers. As the distinguished Irish writer Colm Tóibín says in his book-length study on Bishop, On Elizabeth Bishop (Princeton University Press, 2015), “It was essential for Elizabeth Bishop that words in a statement be precise and exact.