Poetry response Sestina

Britton Woodall
Jernigan
English AP
29 March 2011
Sestina
The poem “Sestina” by Elizabeth Bishop shares a sad moment between grandmother and granddaughter. The reason for the sadness is unclear. However, water imagery expresses suppressed emotion ready to burst. Ironically, I also relate to this poem in some immediate family connection like I have with so many other poems we have responded to.
My grandmother, or “Mama” as my family calls her, lives with us. Like the poem she always seems to be suppressing tears for many understandable reasons. The first being the fact that her husband, my grandfather, died a few years ago. His memory always rests with her because they were together for such a long time. The second reason being the fact that she is slowly losing her mind and she knows it. She cannot tell difference between my dad and I partly because her poor vision and partly because of her memory. She cannot remember anything she does throughout the whole. She runs purely on emotion and hunger because her mind is so weak. Her stomach tells her what to eat and heart tells he how to feel.
The fact that I know all this makes me feel like the child drawing the houses., the child trying to draw a perfect world when it is not. Except I am not even trying to draw a better world. I just watch hers fall apart and stay far away as possible. I understand the emotion waiting to burst in the poem because I see it at home. I do not have to know what the causes it in the poem.