Poetry Analysis for Sestina

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Background Elizabeth Bishop had a miserable childhood. Her father died when she was 8 months old and her mother suffered a lot from mental problems. She was so sick that she had to be hospitalized and as a result Bishop did not see her mother very often when she was a child. And her mother unfortunately died before reuniting with her daughter. When Bishop was young, she lived with her grandparents and did not have a chance to experience the life of living with her parents. She was not happy living with her grandparents. And later she had to leave her grandparents for study. The separation made her childhood even more unhappy. Her sad experiences in the childhood reflect in her poems. And we will come back to these key events when we dissect through the poem. Elizabeth Bishop also spent a lot of time travelling around the world. This enables her to use imaginative language to describe different things from both the outside and the insight. Sound devices it helps to stress the feeling and emotion throughout the poem Rhyme scheme The 6 end words on the lines of each stanza are the same but just in different order. This rhyme scheme is the pattern of a sestina. The end words of the first stanza repeat at the end of the lines in the next five stanzas . And two of them will appear in each line of the last stanza. The poet used this pattern to emphasize these six words. They are the core items and the clue throughout the poem. The story takes place besides the stove in the house. The stove makes up the background of the poem. The grandmother is always busy around the stove. And stove is used to give people food and warmth. It is like grandmother's good friend that can gives her warmth and support. House can represent family. And this is not a normal family. The grandmother and child in this poem do not have a close relationship as normal grandparents and

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