Elizabeth Bishop's "Sestina"Elizabeth Bishop's "Sestina" takes its title from the verse form of the Italian origin of that name. However, the name of the poem is not only that remind us of its difficult and complex form, but also to enhance the subject of the poem: the fatal forces that run through the character's life. Therefore, the main characteristic of the poetic form, the six repeated final words, "grandmother", ". child", "house", "stove", "almanac", "tears", all `work` together to underline this meaning, that the experience of the characters, as well as every other experience, "had to be". The first word ending is "home".A house symbolizes a quiet domestic life, but the rain falling on the house creates a sense of cold atmosphere, which is reinforced by the situation of the grandmother who tries to hide her tears verse, it becomes clear that the grandmother believes that everything was "predicted by the almanac." The almanac represents the belief that everything is determined by the stars, including the rain that falls on the house. Now the house is part of a predetermined system, as are the grandmother and the child who live in the house. By the third stanza, the speaker "joins" the grandmother's belief in the omniscient almanac by comparing the vapors resulting from heating the water to the rain falling on the house, saying, "the little hard tears of the kettle dance like crazy... the way the rain must dance on the house." After showing how the house and the rain are part of a determined and "predicted" system, the fourth stanza refines and brings the reader back to her previous notion of home symbolizing family, as the grandmother's tears coincide with the "cold[ness] of the house." In the fifth s...... middle of the paper ......tear control becomes abundantly clear when the almanac decides that it is "Time to plant tears" now there is no longer any doubt about the progress of the tears . Just as the final six words repeat in a predetermined order, so the world described in the poem is tied to the predetermined rules of the stars depicted in the almanac. And just as the poet cannot use a rigorous form of poetry without adhering to its predetermined laws, the reality of poetry is one in which all objects, animate or inanimate, must adhere to the predetermined laws of the almanac. Thus Bishop uses a rigorous form that emulates a rigorous world in which everything, be it "equinoctial tears", rain on the roof, or even a child's drawing, should be. Work Cited: The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms. Ed. M. Strand and E. Boland. New York: Norton 2001