Sestina

The poem “Sestina” examines strategies for handling loss and managing grief. Short of introducing biography into a reading of the poem—Elizabeth Bishop was raised by her grandmother in Nova Scotia after the sudden death of her father and her mother’s subsequent commitment to a psychiatric facility—there is no way to determine exactly what has happened to so traumatize this otherwise quiet moment between a child and her doting grandmother. The grandmother prepares an afternoon tea break while the child proudly creates crayon drawings at the kitchen table.

Bishop creates that sense of loss and grief indirectly. It is early autumn, the season in which nature begins its slow surrender to winter. Rain cloaks the house like a heavy curtain. It is late afternoon, with the day slipping into night, and the grandmother cannot hide her tears. The child, although not as aware as her grandmother, senses sorrow and fixates on how the steam from the tea kettle beads up on the hot stove top like “small hard tears” (14).

In the poem, loss can be felt but not articulated. The grandmother does not want to burden the child, and the child does not have the vocabulary or the experience to put her confusion into words.