SanemK

__Diction__- all have depressing connotations: rain, failing, tears, beats, mad, shivers, chilly, inscrutable. __Imagery__- Setting – A gloomy, cold September day in a grandmother’s cottage. __Details__- The child is hints at knowing the situation the grandmother tries to hide from him. In his drawing of the house, he proudly shows how he added a mysterious man, thought to be the deceased husband/father. His attempts at remembering and honoring his father/grandfather end up depressing his grandmother more. __Language__- Non-formal, no colloquial language. __Form__- Sestina (see description in title): 123456, 615243, 364125, 532614, 451362, 246531, 65, 24, 31 __Point of View__- Narration of grandmother and grandchild. __Allusions__- Marvel stove- brand of stove circa 1900s __Symbolism__- Almanac: a source of future events that was unable to predict the death of her husband/son __Figurative Language__- Personification of “teakettle’s small hard tears” (14) shows that the grandmother sees tears in everything as she tries to hold her emotions back. She sees a “teacup full of dark brown tears” (22), “button like tears” (29), and how “little moons fall down like tears” (32). The birdlike almanac hovering above the child also shows how the future is looming over the child’s presumed innocence.
 * ~ ==[[image:elizabeth_bishop.jpg width="162" height="237" align="left"]]== ||~ ="Sestina" by Elizabeth Bishop= ||
 * [|VOICETHREAD] ||  ||
 * Title**: A sestina is form of poetry comprised of six six-lined stanzas followed by a tercet. Each line in the stanzas are ended by the same set of six words but in alternating patterns.
 * Paraphrase**: A grandmother and her grandchild are sitting in a kitchen on a gloomy September afternoon. The tone suggests an air of sadness as the grandmother is harboring depressing thoughts but puts on a front for the child who is more aware of things that she thinks. The poem suggests that the grandmothers husband or son –the child’s father- has died.
 * Connotation**:
 * Attitude**: The depressing tone of a deceased father/grandfather hint at Bishop’s own life. After her father died, her mother went into a psychotic breakdown and was institutionalized, thus forcing her to live with her grandmother. The same could be happening in this poem as the grandmother lost her son – the child’s father– and is attempting to put on a brave face for the sake of the child.
 * Shifts**: The tone shifts in the final tercet of the poem. The gloominess of the rainy September day carries on with the grandmother’s depression. Yet, the almanac tells the grandmother to plant the tears as to allow something to grow and flourish from an otherwise negative event.
 * Theme**: Death- the presumed death of a father or grandfather sets the depressing tone for the poem.
 * Title**: The title remains to only allude to the form of the poem.