Sestina by Elizabeth Bishop

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SestinabyElizabeth Bishop

• Analyzing and Answering
• Basic Questions
• about
• Poem and Author

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When did Elizabeth Bishop live?

• 1911-1979

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Who influenced Bishops poetry?

• George Herbert
• Early 17th century poet
• Marianne Moore
• 20th century poet
• Through Moore's influence, Bishop came to see
  poetry as an available, viable vocation for a
  woman. Moore recommended Bishop for the Houghton
  Mifflin Prize, and Bishop's manuscript North and
  South was chosen for publication in August 1946
  from over 800 entries.
• Lota de Macedo Soares
• her friend and nurse, and with the landscape and
  culture of Brazil.

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Who influenced Bishops poetry?

• Robert Lowell
• 20th century poet
• Showed Bishop possibilities--practically, in the
  form of grants, fellowships, and awards, and
  artistically. In 1950 Lowell helped Bishop secure
  the post of poetry consultant for the Library of
  Congress while she worked on her second book.
• Maud Shepherdson
• lived in an apartment in a South Boston tenement.
  
• An unpublished manuscript, "Mrs. Sullivan
  Downstairs," recounts Bishop's love for this
  neighborhood. There, Bishop later recalled, she
  began to write poetry, influenced by Aunt Maud's
  love of literature.

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Name five extremely emotional moments for Bishop.

• Father died before she was one
• Mother was committed to a mental institution when
  she was five
• Mother suffered many nervous collapses before she
  was five
• After her mother's hospitalization, Bishop lived
  in with her mother's family, in a loving,
  comforting atmosphere. However, the equilibrium
  that she had gained was upset by her paternal
  grandparents' decision to raise the child with
  them in Worcester.
• Lota de Macedo Soares suicide

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Name three ailments that Bishop suffered from.

• A cashew fruit allergic reaction that kept her
  bedridden
• Eczema
• Asthma
• St. Vitus's dance
• Any of various disorders of the nervous system
  marked by involuntary, jerky movements,
  especially of the arms, legs, and face, and by
  incoordination.
• Nervous ailments that made her nearly too weak to
  walk

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Name four themes central to Bishops poetry.

• Geography and landscape
• Human connection with the natural world
• Questions of knowledge and perception
• The ability or inability of form to control chaos

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List three awards Bishop won.

• Houghton Mifflin poetry award in 1946
• Lucy Martin Donnelly Fellowship from Bryn Mawr
  College in 1950 and an award from the American
  Academy of Arts and Letters.
• 1956, the Pulitzer Prize for her collection of
  poetry, North South - A Cold Spring
• National Book Award and the National Book Critics
  Circle Award, as well as two Guggenheim
  fellowships.
• In 1976, she became the first woman to receive
  the International Neustadt Prize for Literature.

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Sources Used

• http//www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a_f/bishop/
  about.htm

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SestinaPoem Analysis
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Where is the grandmother and child in this poem?

• In the kitchen of an old house during a rainy
  September night
• Lines 1-3

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What is the grandmother doing?

• She talks and laughs as she reads jokes from the
  almanac
• She cuts break, serves tea, hangs up the almanac,
  adds word in the stove, busies herself around the
  kitchen

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What is the child doing?

• The grandchild sits at the table and draws
  pictures

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What does the child draw?

• A rigid house with a winding pathway
• Man with buttons like tears
• Flower bed in the front of the house
• Another inscrutable house
• Inscrutable Difficult to understand mysterious

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Who does the child add to the picture?

• A man with button tears
• Grandfather

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What does equinoctial mean?

• adj 1 relating to the vicinity of the equator 2
  relating to an equinox (when the lengths or night
  and day are equal) n the great circle on the
  celestial sphere midway between the celestial
  poles
• In this sense, the tears are large and circular

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What two items are described as equinoctial?

• Her tears and the raindrops beating on the roof

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Why is the grandmother crying?

• The loss of her husband

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How does the poem tie to her known emotional life

• Bishops life was wrought with pain and loss of
  family members
• Father and mother
• Grandmothers loss of her husband