“The Fish,” written by Elizabeth Bishop in 1946, is perhaps most known for its incredible use of imagery, but this analysis does not merely focus on imagery. Instead, it is based on a quote by Mark Doty from his essay “A Tremendous Fish.” In it he says, “‘The Fish’” is a carefully rendered model of an engaged mind at work” (Doty). After reading this statement, it causes one to reflect more in-depth about how the poem was written, and not just about what its literal meaning lays out. In “The Fish,” Bishop’s utilization of certain similes, imagery in the last few lines, narrative poem style, and use of punctuation allows the audience to transport into the life of the fish; therefore, allowing them to understand Bishop’s ideas on freedom and wisdom.
In “The Fish,” Bishop uses four similes, in particular, that permit the audience to understand the feelings of freedom and wisdom. The first simile compares the fish’s skin, using “like,” to “ancient wallpaper / …/ stained and lost through age” (Bishop, Lines 13-5). By Bishop using this simile, the audience can undoubtedly recognize that the fish is being portrayed as elderly. As in countless cases before, the idea of elderly is considered to be a symbol or reference of wisdom. Thus, this depiction of the fish being old produces the idea that the fish, in part, represents wisdom. The second and third similes Bishop use states, “I thought of the coarse white flesh / packed like feathers” (Bishop, LL 27-8), and “The pink swim-bladder / like a big peony” ( LL 32-3). What do these similes have to do with the ideas of freedom and wisdom? Absolutely nothing. The significance of these similes, according to Doty, is that Bishop is able to enter back-and-forth into the body of the fis...
... middle of paper ...
... ways in which Bishop used particular similes, imagery in the last few lines, a narrative poem style, and punctuation has allowed her audience to transport into the life of the fish; thus, enabling the audience to understand her ideas of freedom and wisdom.
Works Cited
Bishop, Elizabeth. “The Fish.” The Norton Anthology of American Literature. ED. Nina Baym and Robert S. Levine. 8th ed. Vol. E. New York: Norton, 2012. 73-5. Print
Doty, Mark. “A Tremendous Fish.” New England Review 31.2 (2010): 58+. Literature Resource Center. Web. 16 Mar. 2014.
Literature: An Introduction to Reading and Writing. Ed. Edgar V. Roberts. 4th AP ed. New Jersey: Pearson, 2008. 528-35. Print.
Taylor, Marilyn L. “Tell Them a Story: A Memorable Narrative Poem Features Three Key Elements: Plot, Voice, and Point of View.” The Writer. 125.4 (2012): 17-18. EBSCO Host. Web. 16 Mar. 2014.
In fact, the fish story has become a metaphor reflecting the technique used by Finney for expressing the difficult thing beautifully, to compress a poem choosing what should be kept in a poem and what should be thrown away (Finney, “Interview with: Nikky Finney”), to express whatever difficult feelings she has without much noise or rage. Finney sees activism as a basic part of her work.
Piper’s use of imagery in this way gives the opportunity for the reader to experience “first hand” the power of words, and inspires the reader to be free from the fear of writing.
In this poem called “Creatures” by the author Billy Collins there is a literary device called a metaphor when the reader is reading this poem. A metaphor is a comparison of two unlike things without using the words like or as. In lines one (1) through...
Writing with Readings and Handbook. 3rd ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2013. 52-57. Print.
Meyer, Michael, ed. The Bedford Introduction to Literature: Reading, Thinking, Writing. 5th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 1999.
William Faulkner overwhelms his audience with the visual perceptions that the characters experience, making the reader feel utterly attached to nature and using imagery how a human out of despair can make accusations. "If I jump off the porch I will be where the fish was, and it all cut up into a not-fish now. I can hear the bed and her face and them and I can...
Bishop's initial description of the fish is meant to further develop this theme by presenting the reader with a fish that is "battered," "venerable," and "homely." Bishop compares the fish to "ancient wallpaper." Even without the word ancient preceding it, the general conception of wallpaper is something that fades into the background. One is not supposed to take much notice of it. To add to this impartial picture, the fish is brown, the signature color of dullness. "Shapes like full-blown roses stained and lost through age" (lines 14-15) further cement the image of something with little time left. Fully bloomed roses conjure the image of a flower whose petals are at t...
Wallace, Daniel. Big Fish: A Novel of Mythic Proportions. North Carolina: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2012. N. pag. Print.
Roberts, Edgar V., Literature: An Introduction to Reading and Writing, 4th Compact Edition, Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 2008, print
The poems “Sea Rose” by H.D and “Vague Poem” by Elizabeth Bishop were both written by two women who took over the Victorian era. H.D’s works of writing were best known as experimental reflecting the themes of feminism and modernism from 1911-1961. While Bishop’s works possessed themes of longing to belong and grief. Both poems use imagery, which helps to make the poem more concrete for the reader. Using imagery helps to paint a picture with specific images, so we can understand it better and analyze it more. The poems “Sea Rose” and “Vague Poem” both use the metaphor of a rose to represent something that can harm you, even though it has beauty.
The poet seems to share the same pain with the fish, observing the scene and enjoying the detail just like enjoying an artwork. The poet lets the fish go because she is totally touched by the process between life and death; she loves life but, meanwhile, is deeply hurt by the life. In the poem, the fish has no fear towards her; the desire to live is in the moving and tragic details when she faces the death.
The opening paragraph of the story emphasizes the limitations of the individual’s vision of nature. From the beginning, the four characters in the dingy do not know “the colors of the sky,” but all of them know “the colors of the sea.” This opening strongly suggests the symbolic situations in which average peo...
It is clear that Bishop’s “The Unbeliever” is heavily influenced by her poetic idol Moore because it contains elements are inconsistent with Bishop’s work as a whole. History shows that Elizabeth Bishop was not a strict modernist poet, yet in this sample of her early work you can see her imploring strategies more consistent with Moore’s own unique style. The habit of following a strict structure and the habit of carefully sculpting her poems are two of Moore’s distinctive mannerisms. While the shape of “The Unbeliever” does serve a specific purpose, it is interesting to note that this is an uncommon tactic for Bishop. Not only does Moore heavily influence Bishop’s work “The Unbeliever”, but it is clear that the poem is also specifically impacted by Moore’s poem “The Mind is an Enchanting Thing”. Beyond following a strict rigid structure and rhyme scheme, Elizabeth Bishop goes one step further and borrows an image from Moore’s poem. While it could be mere coincidence that both poems use the image of a bird, the way that Bishop writes the gull to “blindly [seat] himself astride” (Bishop, 24), represents a direct allusion to the way Moore’s kiwi walks along the ground as if it was “blind” (Moore, 124).
The first element to analyze when looking at “The Fish” is figurative language. The reader is drawn to this element because of its heavy emphasis throughout the poem. Elizabeth Bishop profusely uses similes with the intention of heightening the sensation of fishing. She writes:
Bishop’s use of imagism in “One Art” helps the reader to comprehend the ability of the speaker to move on from lost items such as a mother’s watch or loved houses.