The poem
September rain falls on the house. In the failing light, the old grandmother sits in the kitchen with the child beside the Little Marvel Stove, reading the jokes from the almanac, laughing and talking to hide her tears.
She thinks that her equinoctial tears and the rain that beats on the roof of the house were both foretold by the almanac, but only known to a grandmother. The iron kettle sings on the stove. She cuts some bread and says to the child,
It's time for tea now; but the child is watching the teakettle's small hard tears dance like mad on the hot black stove, the way the rain must dance on the house. Tidying up, the old grandmother hangs up the clever almanac
on its string. Birdlike, the almanac hovers half open above the child, hovers above the old grandmother and her teacup full of dark brown tears. She shivers and says she thinks the house feels chilly, and puts more wood in the stove.
It was to be, says the Marvel Stove. I know what I know, says the almanac. With crayons the child draws a rigid house and a winding pathway. Then the child puts in a man with buttons like tears and shows it proudly to the grandmother.
But secretly, while the grandmother busies herself about the stove, the little moons fall down like tears from between the pages of the almanac into the flower bed the child has carefully placed in the front of the house.
Time to plant tears, says the almanac. The grandmother sings to the marvelous stove and the child draws another inscrutable house.
The Grandmother does not know what to believe. She is in the dark, much like I once was also. It is not the almanac ~ or tears ~ which can help her. But prayer to the Lord Jesus Christ will help her with her life. When the Lord is invited into our lives, He gives us "new spiritual life" and hope of glory with Him in Heaven. If the Grandmother had only been told how to pray: Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, I put my…
Read the whole commentThe Grandmother does not know what to believe. She is in the dark, much like I once was also. It is not the almanac ~ or tears ~ which can help her. But prayer to the Lord Jesus Christ will help her with her life. When the Lord is invited into our lives, He gives us "new spiritual life" and hope of glory with Him in Heaven.
If the Grandmother had only been told how to pray:
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, I put my faith in You today. Please forgive my sins and come into my heart to live. Thank You for shedding Your Blood to make atonement for the sins of the world and for my sins too. The wages of our sins is death. You paid the sin-debt that we all owe. You tasted death for us, and on the third day rose again. I receive Your love and mercy today. Fill me with Your Holy Spirit. Lead me through this life. Teach me how to pray and to read Your Word, the Bible. In Your Name, Jesus, I pray. Amen.
If the Grandmother ~ or anyone had prayed like that with faith in Christ, He would have given her life ~ more abundantly and given her peace ~ because Jesus is the One Who reconciles us to God the Heavenly Father. Jesus bridges the gap between sinful mankind and a Holy God.
Now we can have hope for Heaven. Jesus went to prepare a place there for us. And He will return to take us there someday. Tears will be wiped away!
Comments are meant to provide critical commentary and analysis for others so that they may better understand the poem. They are not a place to be an Internet evangelist! Do you think people read comments because they're looking for religion? They don't! So keep it to the religiously-affiliated sites where people are looking for that kind of thing.
And yes, I'm aware that this isn't a "constructive" comment. I came here looking for help on research I'm doing and only found your garbage.
This poem has nothing to do with Jesus Christ. It is about aging and the passing of time. The grandmother and the child are ephemeral, and the house and stove are objects without mortality that remain unchanged and unscathed by time. The stove is "marvelous" and the drawing house is "inscrutable" because both are inpenetrable, and will remain after the grandmother and child are gone.
Please do not bring religion into this beautiful and complex poem; Bishop would be horrified.
Excuse my English! I totally agree, this poem has nothing to do with religions. It's about death and Innocence. Elizabeth Bishop lose her father during her first year, she lived with her grandmother until 6. The grandmother is trying to hide her tears when she is looking at "the flower bed" the child drew certainly the father's grave?? I think the most important thing is the innocence of the child, (the persona is…
Read the whole commentExcuse my English! I totally agree, this poem has nothing to do with religions. It's about death and Innocence. Elizabeth Bishop lose her father during her first year, she lived with her grandmother until 6. The grandmother is trying to hide her tears when she is looking at "the flower bed" the child drew certainly the father's grave??
I think the most important thing is the innocence of the child, (the persona is the child) and that's why the poem is hard to understand, the poem is childhood's phantasy, a remembrance by the point of view of the child.Thus, Bishop puts distance between her and the child "the child" "she"....
Tell me what you think about the poem, I need your advices I have to make a commentary for monday ! ;-)
Just one more thing to Kathreen,
It's thanks to sorrow and sadness that poets, novelists can write. (90% of literature is based on the artists' pain) For instance, Baudelaire, Sylvia Plath, V Woolf, etc. So don't think that jesus' peace or faith can satisfy anyone. It's false and it's more abnormal than assume who we truly are (WE ARE ALL BAD SINNERS, MAD, PERVERRS). But it's great and it can produce beautiful poems!!!
"September rain" falls down on the house while grandmother cries for sadnes. I think Bishop tries to paint a scene of private sadness and emotions, difficult to express especially to a child, and even more so to the reader. I cannot see what is so sad except that she is old and old age is supposed to be the prelude to death. The tears on the kettle, in the tea cup--all seems uneven. What are the "little moons" that fall down from the almanac? The personification of the stove and the house makes sense as Claire explains it, but I think it makes the poem worse.
Harry Son, the little moons that the poem refers to is the lunar calendar of the current year that the almanac was published in. "Time to plant tears" expresses the almanac's indifference. The almanac is a book of information. "Time to plant..." is directed to farmers and gardeners to indicate the best time of year for planting vegetables, fruits, and herbs. There is an important element in the use of "time" as in…
Read the whole commentHarry Son, the little moons that the poem refers to is the lunar calendar of the current year that the almanac was published in. "Time to plant tears" expresses the almanac's indifference. The almanac is a book of information. "Time to plant..." is directed to farmers and gardeners to indicate the best time of year for planting vegetables, fruits, and herbs. There is an important element in the use of "time" as in the proper time of one's life for weeping. The almanac is cold and heartless for showing no sympathy to the fact that people cannot reserve their sorrows for another day. The almanac neither includes the difficulties of life and death nor love and hate. It is rather quite useless aside from its use as a factbook.
I agree with the comments on religion. I found no allusions to the Bible or God or anything like that in this poem. Overall, the Sestina seems very morose to me. It seems so slow and laid back almost in a depressing way. When Bishop talks about the grandmother commenting on how it is cold and puts more wood in the stove in the fourth paragraph, it seems like no matter how much wood they put in the stove, they will never feel warm from the cold they feel inside. Just a wild guess, but I would say Bishop is thinking about her mother in the mental hospital when she wrote those lines.
Here are some thoughts, neither right nor wrong. I think this poem is about the death of the father of the child- the grandmother's son. The poem shows the grandmother burdened with the knowledge that she must keep from the child. The almanac appears to be all-knowing, and represents the passing of time and the seasons of life, perhaps even the knowledge that he would die. The child doesn't understand the meaning of what its drawing. The child can't comprehend the death or the sadness, and so the grandmother hides it from the child. The poem is meant to show the childs innocence, and how it is preserved by the grandmother, who is silently suffering.
I'm surprised no one has mentioned the form, i.e. the sestina. The repetitious permutations of the end words. Why choose those words/ WHy stove, grandmother, tears, child, almanac, house? This poem is about sorrow and restraint, the obsessive quality of grief, expression through domestic rituals, and as a previous poster has commented, the continuity and "inscrutability" of inanimate objects.
if this poetry is so metaphorical,than why almanac,why stove and horrible deux ex machina(imagination).
what if almanac represent prediction of future,kids drawing is,her thoughts and idea of her life.stove would be a meaningless like most of us.so it might be soul of her father or mother telling the girl about life and death .
As a teacher, I enjoy reading all of these comments and ideas about the poem. But one thing that I and most teachers work very hard to impress on our students is that no one ( except the poet herself ) has the one real true answer to a poem's total meaning. No one knows exactly what the poet was doing here. What we DO know is that she created a beautiful and touching piece within the boundaries of a challenging…
Read the whole commentAs a teacher, I enjoy reading all of these comments and ideas about the poem. But one thing that I and most teachers work very hard to impress on our students is that no one ( except the poet herself ) has the one real true answer to a poem's total meaning. No one knows exactly what the poet was doing here. What we DO know is that she created a beautiful and touching piece within the boundaries of a challenging poetry form, the sestina. With that in mind, be careful to look at her six word choices. Note that she sets it in September and that the tears are "equinoctial"--why? At the very least, consider that this poet had some intention of direction with the poem, and it most likely was NOT religious but rather more about age and youth, grief and innocence, and the symbolic qualities that only an almanac could possess. My students delight in finding possible meanings in this poem, but a true reader and lover of poetry must finally acknowledge that the poet used her or his word choices to convey a direction of sorts. Just ask one!!!
Thank you guys a lot! This poem is about life and death. But, if you want, everything can be related to religions. And, could anyone do me a favour, talk about "equinoctial" please? I am not an astronologist...
Equinoctial means of or pertaining to an equinox, which is when day and night are approximately the same length all over the earth. This happens when the sun crosses the plane of the earth's equator. It occurs usually around March 21 for the spring equinox, and September 22 for the fall equinox.
You people didnt have to target Kathree like that. It is hher opinion to what she thinks or belives Sestina is about. Just like you all stated your own analyzations of the poem, she did. No one is right, but the author/writer of the poem. If anything, you all should look into your own life, and notice your faults. To come at her like that was wrong, and whatever you may believe in religion matter doesnt have to agree with everyone else's views. All in all, I belive that Sestina had to deal with the grandmother's loss and how the symbols relate to her tears. and the title tells it all.
i jope you all know what a sestina is. meaning "song of sixes" a sestina is a very rigidly structured poem. a sestina must contain 6 verses. each verse must have 6 lines.finally at the end there must be a triplet (3 lines). a sestina must have 6 key words, and each line of each verse must end in one of these 6 words, all 2 be used in each verse. the triplet must also contain all the 6 key words, in any order. with all these restrictions i cant imagine how hard it must be to write a sestina. i think its amazing how bishop stuck to this rigid structure and yet produced a poem that flows so well and sounds spontaneous.her sincerity shines through so well that you dont even notice the structure
To me, this also has to deal with the passing of a person. The fact that the grandmother has equinoctial tears, and more importantly those of the September Equinox (leading into winter) is key to reading into this poem. The equinox represents the transition of the sun to the other side of the planet. Here it is passing away from the persona because it is become winter. It is getting colder, tears are coming on. This…
Read the whole commentTo me, this also has to deal with the passing of a person. The fact that the grandmother has equinoctial tears, and more importantly those of the September Equinox (leading into winter) is key to reading into this poem. The equinox represents the transition of the sun to the other side of the planet. Here it is passing away from the persona because it is become winter. It is getting colder, tears are coming on. This obviously (and obviously simply my opinion) has to do with the death of someone, probably the man in the picture with Tears as buttons. The grandmother must be strong for the boy, and bare the pain for both because the boy can't understand what has really happened. I also agree with previous comments about the stove being something "immortal". And also the almanac being the all-knowing figure. It's a beautiful poem, and she has taken the form of the sestina and executed it so gracefully that it is in no way distracting from the repetition. Wonderful, bitter-sweet work of literature.
This poem
I agree, there is no ONE correct way to analyze a poem, but there are wrong ways. For example, this poem has nothing to do with Jesus, or balloons. You could try to make extreme leaps to get there, but the poet doesn't allow you to make those connections within the poem.
Just like I think that his poem probably has very little do with any kind of organized religion, because the poet doesn't give any opportunity to examine it that way.
And to one of the people who posted before me, I don't think analyzations is a word.
To Ruth
I don't think anyone was really that harsh to Kathreen, what she said and the way she said it was a little.. pushy, in some ways, and most of what she said had absolutely nothing to do with the poem, therefore, it isn't needed or wanted on a page that is supposed to be about this poem.
People are allowed to write whatever they want, but if everyone spouted their religious beliefs on any website they wanted to, I think a lot of people would get upset.
I don't want to hear about your religious ideas, even if they are the same as mine, and I'm not going to blab about my religious ideas especially if they are irrelevant.
To all those who say, "There's no right way to interpret a poem" you are completely wrong. There is only one meaning, one effect, to every poem. You can either interpret it the correct way or the incorrect way. There are no "hidden" meanings, and no teachers don't just make up stuff to impress students. If you do this, you are a bad teacher. You should know your poem inside and out, and notice the devices Bishop uses to enhance the feeling of "moving on".
Wow!