Sestina

“Sestina” (1956), by New England poet Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979), ostensibly recreates a quiet moment shared by a child and her grandmother in a kitchen on a rainy autumn afternoon. As the grandmother busies herself preparing an afternoon snack of hot tea and bread, the child draws bold, colorful crayon pictures that she proudly shares with her grandmother.

Yet nothing feels quite right. Reflecting her background in contrapuntal music composition, Bishop creates subtle feelings of both grief, unspoken and unshared, and joy, newly discovered and tentative. Those feelings, impossible to define exactly, give the otherwise unremarkable domestic scene an urgency and emotional tension that lurks beneath and within the simple moment that the poem records.

Published at the height of Bishop’s long career, which included winning both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize, “Sestina” epitomizes the writer’s signature style. Often regarded as a poet’s poet because of her command of intricate and innovative forms, Bishop here uses the sestina, a form of poetry that dates to early Renaissance France. Its complex system of cyclical repetition evokes transformation and the changing of the seasons, much as the poem’s content does.