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Pablo C. Avila
ENG270.5908
Instructor, Noelle Kocot-Tomblin
3 October 2008
Uncovering Childhood Experiences in Sestina
Poetry encapsulates, most of the times, hidden meanings and sentiments that are to be revealed to
a persistent reader through a careful and patient reading with special attention to the symbols and
characters presented because they represent the source of the poem. These meanings and
sentiments, especially placed between lines and stanzas within poems, are sometimes
experiences and motives lived by their authors. One example is Elizabeth Bishop who, in her
poem “Sestina,” bares the trauma she went through when losing her parents as a child revealing
first her suffering side in the character of the grandmother and then her willingness to overcome
the situation in the character of the child.
The experience of losing her parents marked Bishop’s poetry, later revealed on her poem
“Sestina.” The poem reveals childhood experiences lived by Bishop confirming that poetry is a
way to uncover past events, as Kathleen Spivack opines in her critical essay “Conceal/Reveal:
Passion and Restraint in the Work of Elizabeth Bishop,” “Poetry can be seen as betrayal, for, in
its own sidewise secret way, it dares to speak in a meta-language about those things which
cannot—and in some cases must not—be said straight on” (496). By this, Spivack explains how
poetry is a way of expression for those events which are not to be revealed with too much
facility. When Elizabeth Bishop was one year old, she lost her father, and when she was five
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years old, her mother came from the mental hospital where she later came back to commit
suicide. This experience marked Bishop’s life at first. In addition, Bishop was asthmatic, an
unhealthy condition that, added to the absence of her parents, affected her life. As Spivack
describes, “This [Bishop’s asthmatic condition] will turn out to be significant.” As Spivack
continues, she will relate this issue to the absence of Bishop’s mom, “[Asthma] is often thought
to be triggered by abandonment, especially when a small baby is abandoned by its mother”
(Spivack 501). These two facts, her asthmatic condition but more importantly the absence of her
parents meant a big influence in Bishop’s life and later writing.
On the one hand, the character of the grandmother in the poem “Sestina” represents the
dark and painful side of Bishop’s own childhood trauma. The scenario is depicted as dark and
depressing as Bishop describes it in the first line of the poem “September rain falls on the
house.” September is characterized by the dark weather of the upcoming fall season towards the
end of the summer, thus, a September rain is obscure compare to a June rain. This first line gives
a strong and clear idea of sadness the reader should expect as the poem continues. As the poem
develops, the reader is presented to the grandmother who is introduced, probably intentionally, as
“old,” as Bishop says,
“In the failing light, the old grandmother
sits in the kitchen with the child” (Lines 2 and 3 emphasis mine).
Here the adjective given to the grandmother describing her as “old” gives the reader the idea that
there may be some sort of sadness or sorrow and tiredness in her character. As the poem goes on,
the grandmother demonstrates how bad she feels about the years that have passed by, as
described in the second stanza,
“She thinks that her equinoctial tears
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and the rain that beats on the roof of the house
were both foretold by the almanac” (Lines 7, 8, and 9).
At this point, the grandmother is permanently seeing what the almanac contains but more
importantly realizing that what has happened seems to have been foretold by the almanac. Now,
the sense of loss is evident in the character of the grandmother and it also fits, at the same time,
to the situation where Bishop lost her parents when child, the same sentiment of loss and
loneliness Bishop felt when her parents were not there by her side anymore. Thus, it is clear how
Bishop evidences the painful experience she went through when she lost her parents in the
character of the grandmother.
On the other hand, Bishop also presents her willingness to overcome the difficult
situation in the character of the child. As the poem continues, the child is presented to the reader
in a different way the grandmother was before, as Bishop writes,
“With crayons the child draws a rigid house
and a winding pathway. Then the child
puts in a man with buttons like tears
and shows it proudly to the grandmother” (Lines 27, 28, 29, and 30).
By this, it is evident how the child not only demonstrates the deep feeling of loss that is
developed throughout the poem but also reveals a sense of willingness to overcoming that hard
feeling and makes a draw that later “shows it proudly” to the grandmother. In the character of the
child, Bishop shows her decision to go on in life and be a new person despite the absence of her
parents. As Spivack explains, “When the mother disappears, childhood is shattered, the child
disappears and another being inhabits her body, someone who knows horror and deprivation and
loss, someone who must live in the present tense. The past somehow has been erased” (502). By
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this, Spivack attempts to approach a difficult issue in Bishop’s life, the fact of losing one’s
parents means a huge and deep pain within oneself but more importantly it marks the life forever
and having that horror in mind will have effects, erasing the past and revealing those feelings in
some way—writing.
Finally, it is clear how Bishop has rediscovered her past trauma during childhood in her writing.
It is still unknown if she did it in purpose, to tell the story of her life disguised in a poem, or
simply because her unconsciousness cannot get rid of those memories that will live on her
deepest self forever. What it is clear, though, is Bishop’s excellent way of transmitting ideas,
sentiments, and motives through lines that despite reading them over and over are still new and
impressive as in the first reading.
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Work Cited
Spivack Kathleen. “Conceal/Reveal: Passion and Restraint in the Work of Elizabeth Bishop.”
Massachusetts Review, September 2005, Vol. 46 Issue 3: 496-510.