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Many seem to insist that Elizabeth Bishop's poetry is all light-spirited and jocular in tone.
If nothing else can be said about it categorically, though, it is indeed very honest.
One of her better known poems seems to have escaped the notice of most of those who would assert that there is no more serious or contemplative side to her work. In "Sestina", besides achieving real beauty in a rather difficult form, she explores a slightly darker area, to a very moving effect.

First of all, the poem itself can be found here: http://www.sccs.swarthmore.edu /users/03/ahead/sestina.html

The dreariness of autumn catches up with everyone at one point or another. The general feeling is that everything is coming to the end of its cycle, and there is little to no hope for new growth or fresh flowers anytime in the future. Elizabeth Bishop's "Sestina" speaks to the overall decline and weight of impending decay that are wrapped inside the chilling breezes of autumn and the brittleness of old age. The element of melancholy is not overpowering, however, in large part due to the nature of its form, for which the poem is named. The overall effect of the piece becomes one of bittersweet recognition of the darker portion of the inevitable, unstoppable cycle of being, and quiet resignation to the same, yet not without some sense of satisfaction and naturalness. This effect is achieved not only with the brilliant use of imagery and mystery, but also comes in conjunction with the cyclical feeling inherent in the form.
A grandmother and a child share some time of a rainy afternoon in September. The grandmother busies herself with reading from an almanac and seeing to the preparations for the making of tea. The child draws pictures of houses and shows them to the grandmother. The scene is very domestic, and everything that occurs is rather commonplace until near the end, when the stove and almanac speak up, and the moons from the hanging almanac fall into the flowerbed in the child's drawing. The pervasive feeling is one of comfort and familiarity, mixed with tinges of sadness and more mystical, yet unperceived happenings in the latter part of the work. That the mystical and ordinary are mixed in the end is significant mostly because that is what the whole poem seems to be about. The words that are repeated in every stanza are represent ideas that are completely unremarkable, yet take on an air of weight and meaning later. The repetition inherent to the form is partly what gives these

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