Sestina: The Isolated Bishop

The poem “Sestina” by Elizabeth Bishop is an excellent example of how form and structure can be used to heighten the impact of a poem. 

I guess the first important thing to note is what a sestina is. In the most simple terms it is a poem that is thirty-nine lines long, seven stanzas, all consisting of six lines except for the last that is three lines. In addition to this, each of the six lines in each stanza ends with one of six unique words. Each stanza shuffles the six unique words so that the ending words are different than they previously were (this makes more sense if you look at the last word of each line on your own). For the last three lines, each line contains two of the six unique words. 

Now that that’s out of the way we can talk about why I like this poem so much. The first thing I like about this poem is that it creates such an interesting and kind of eerie atmosphere. With the language the narrator uses it seems like there are three entities in this poem: the grandmother, the child, and the inanimate objects that get personified. With how these objects are spoken about it seems like they take up a life of their own in this poem with lines like, “The iron kettle sings,” “It was to be, says the Marvel Stove,” and, “Time to plant tears, says the almanac.” Human language gets used when talking about these objects and they also literally gain voices towards the end of the poem. This heightens the lonely and isolating atmosphere of this poem because it shows that this little girl is so alone with her grandmother that she needs to bring the objects alive in her mind for any shred of connection she can get.

I love how sad the grandmother is in the line, “her equinoctial tears.” This gives us context into the grandmother’s recurring sadness and again serves to compound the somber atmosphere heavily present in this piece. Another important element of the poem that hits this theme of isolation is that the child draws a man in one of her drawings. This is crucial because it shows that there is someone the little girl knows of who is gone and can only be present through her drawing now—she is clearly missing people in her life.

The final element of this poem, and I think my favorite point, is that the first and last stanza end in the word house. This is fascinating because it is as if the house structurally contains the child and the grandmother on the page just like the house contains them within the universe of the poem. This is a super cool, and I think intentional, moment within the poem that puts a unique emphasis on the sestina form and how it is able to work in interesting ways.