Poem for Sestina( Elizabeth Bishop) - Research Paper Example

(“how” and “what end” has been discussed in details in the further portions).The environment where the poem has been set up supports the sense of sorrow within the child and her grandmother, to a great extent. The entire poem consists of a mysterious ambience which is full of darkness and the first stanza “reading the jokes from the almanac, laughing and talking to hide her tears” Establishes that something wrong has happened to the child of the poem about which the old lady is concerned and so she continuously covers and tries to hide it from the child.

The poetic pattern followed by the author for “Sestina” portrays a sense of deferment. (It means the poem has no definite conclusion, its hanging and it’s up to the readers to decide what will be the end of the poem, a positive one or a negative one). For a pessimist the poem is full of sorrow and darkness while an optimist would find hope and expectation in the Sestina. Thus the thesis statement says, life is like a coin which always possesses two sides. Hope and grief comes hand in hand and follow each other often.

You have a good start here. You could strengthen the focus of your essay by clarifying your thesis (by being more specific and argumentative). Potential! The dark and raining night The poem starts with a raining background in the month of September. The characters could be found within a kitchen scene where the grandmother puts her effort to make the child forget her tears as she lit up the marvel stove to make the house warmer. She keeps on reading the jokes from the Almanac in an attempt to hide her own tears.

An Almanac is a kind of annual calendar comprising of the data about the date, astronomy and tide table. The origin of the term can be traced at the later part of the Middle English via Old French and Medieval Latin from Spanish Arabic al-mana? “the calendar” (Oxford Dictionaries 2013). Grandmother attempts to share her grief The stove is the symbol of comfort and warmth which the grandmother longs for. The grandmother feels a bit superstitious about the forecast by the almanac, as she believes that the tragedy that has surrounded the house had already been foretold by the almanac.

The grandma feels helpless as her “Equinoctial” tears could be controlled. The term “Equinoctial” tears meant the equal amount of grief caused during the daytime as well as the night, which happened due to the events taking place in the old lady and her grandchild’s life. “Equinoctial” means having an equal length of day and night. The word has its origin in the later period of Middle English (in a way that relates equal periods of day and night) via Old French from Latin aequinoctialis from aequinoctium (Oxford Dictionaries 2013).

She couldn’t even share the grief with the little kid as she was too young to realize that her parents are no more with her. Therefore the lady starts interacting with the kettle as the author personifies the Kettle in the poem: “The iron kettle sings on the stove… the teakettle's small hard tears dance like mad on the hot black stove” The evidence of darkness can be felt in the description throughout the poem. The ray of hope However among all the darkness of sorrow, the grandmother symbolizes the hope and optimism a new day brings.

She continues to arrange for breakfast for the child and gives her some bread to eat. She prepares tea for them but the child was totally absorbed in preparing a sketch with her crayons. Still