Elizabeth Bishop is a Massachusetts native who happened to be independently wealthy to travel and dedicate her life to poetry. At the age of one, Bishop’s father passed away leaving her mother a widow who then suffered from mental illness. The poem, Sestina, is a reflection of Bishop’s life at this time of her father’s passing. In reality, Bishop was forced to live with her relatives knowing that she would never see her mother again. 

Sestina is defined as, “a poem with six stanzas of six lines and a final triplet, all stanzas having the same six words at the line-ends in six different sequences that follow a fixed pattern, and with all six words appearing in the closing three-line envoi.” Elizabeth Bishop uses this title and also performs this kind of poem to describe a scene of family uncertainty to concentrate on the relationship between the old grandmother, the child and the irresistible continuity of time by using the same six words at the line-ends in six different sequences resulting in the themes of this poem: house, grandmother, child, stove, almanac, and tears. 

There is a feeling of sadness and something has happened that is fateful and mysterious. It’s September and it’s raining: “September rain falls on the house” and the grandmother and child sit in the kitchen of their house as the light fades: “In the failing light, the old grandmother / sits in the kitchen with the child” a simple start to this poem but as the poem progress, this cozy domestic scene begins to alter in shape and tone.