Sestina

For our poetry presentation my group did the Sestina and we didn't have a lot of time to present so I thought I would sum it up.  I would just like to say that Scott did a wonderful job on his performance and deserves the two tickets.  The poem takes place in a kitchen during a rainstorm, beside  a wood stove, where a grandmother makes tea and reads jokes from an almanac to her grandchild, who draws a picture of a house.  This poem is actually a painful and depressing story of the grandmother and child living with loss.  The loss is probably a loss of the child's father of the grandmothers husband.  Also, the mother is gone so it could have to do with that.  But throughout the poem the grandmother tries to remain cheerful in order to protect the child, but the child can sense the grandmother's tears even though she tries to hide them.  The child expresses this through the picture she drew of a man with "buttons like tears" and by "watching the teakettle's small hard tears dance like mad."  The child recognizes her grandmother's tear and predicament, and the poem goes into the mind of the child.  The child turns the almanac into a bird, lets the stove and almanac speak, and these provide a distinct way of being effectual, it is the child's way of dealing with things.  Any other thoughts?