In the poem “(love song, with two goldfish)” the love life of two individuals are portrayed as the lives of two fish. Their romance is failing as one lovers constant affection pushes the other away. In the end, one-sided love can only get them so far. The poet Grace Chua uses fish diction, strategically placed parentheses, and the symbol of the bowl in order to show how one's undying love can often leave them broken when their feelings are not reciprocated.
The poet uses diction to characterize the female lover as a fish, showing their playful, endearing nature, but also the physical limitations their love possesses. She has “scales”, “fish eyes,” and “kissy lips”(4,8,9). These are all the characteristics of a fish, making her seem unnatural and
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This is done in order to show the broken up nature of this relationship. In the first four stanzas the poet has parenthesis around each. By doing so it sections each stanza off into its own singular entity. By breaking up each stanza with this curved shape it creates a visual representation of the lines being a bowl. The shape the parenthesis make is very similar to a bowl, and breaks up the flow in between each piece. The only area where this is broken is in the last stanza. The poet highlights the lines “(the reason, she said / she wanted)” (23-24) and the line “(and he could not give)” (25) since they are each in their own set of parenthesis. Since the parenthesis represent the bowl this shows that they are each in their own bowl. This is symbolic to an end in their relationship. The only line in the poem that is out of parenthesis is “a life / beyond the / (Bowl)” (26-27-28). When imagining a “life beyond”, the poet shows how it is free of any confines or limitations. Instead of breaking free from the bowls by supporting one another, they remain sheltered
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.
I am reading “The Bass, the River, and Shelia Mant” by W.D. Wetherell, The story is about a young boy trying to choose between a beautiful girl and his passion of fishing. In this journal, I will be questioning and evaluating.
"The Fish" is filled with poetic images all for the reason of making a powerful point,
Lee was able to depict such an arduous relationship between a father and son… a relationship that Lee says shall one day fail, but for now, it is pure and full of emotion. The love the father has for the child, for wanting to keep him by his side is one of true compassion. The complexity between the child being so delighted and displaying such admiration, of wanting his father to read him another bedtime story; to one of which, is screaming at his father for wanting to keep him as a child. This sort of relationship was able to be composed by the use of imagery between the father ageing and the scratching of his ear; to the use of the poems structure layout and point of view all played massive roles in the understanding and perception of this literary art work. Thus, the relationship between the father and son is one of compassion and affection; which, cannot be told using simple minded tactics such as logic and
Within this poem there is underlying imagery, which further defines the dilemma of the play and the grievance of the Wife. The mandarin duck and the fish, or t...
As a consequence of the narrator cutting the fishing line, he feels a "sick, nauseous feeling in [his] stomach" as he understood the grave mistake he has done. He can't comprehend that he had made the absurd decision to cut the line that released the fish he wanted to hook greatly. He treasures fishing significantly but his desire for Sheila took command. Throughout the rest of the date, he retained that tainted sensation in his stomach as that lost fish stays in his thought. As a result, after a month had relinquished "the spell [Sheila] cast over [him] was gone" due to it denoting superficial love and not true passion, but what adhered to him was his true love, the lost bass that haunted him all server and "haunts [him] still." The narrator discovers that the affection for Sheila was not authentic but what is genuine is his passion for fishing. He comes to terms with his disastrous error and grasps that judgments formulated on the premise of superficial values lead to sorrow and anguish. Ultimately, the narrator learns through Sheila that the judgment he made because of his shallow desire provokes pain and
Love and affection is an indispensable part of human life. In different culture love may appear differently. In the poem “My god my lotus” lovers responded to each other differently than in the poem “Fishhawk”. Likewise, the presentation of female sexuality, gender disparity and presentation of love were shown inversely in these two poems. Some may argue that love in the past was not as same as love in present. However, we can still find some lovers who are staying with their partners just to maintain the relationship. We may also find some lovers having relationship only because of self-interest. However, a love relationship should always be out of self-interest and must be based on mutual interest. A love usually obtains its perfectness when it develops from both partners equally and with same affection.
Both poets want to be loved in the poems in their own way. While both poem’s present a theme of love, it is obvious that the poet’s view on love changes from how they view love at the beginning of the poem from how they see it at the end.
The last poem “The Fish” illustrates the sorrow of life itself. The skin, the blood, the entrails, everything of the fish depicts vividly and dramatically. The poet seems to share the same pain with the fish observing the scene and enjoys 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 life is in the moving and tragic details when faces the
The poets integrated ?metaphysical conceits? as focal parts of these poems. Along with these, they used effective language as a basis for their convincing arguments, they included subjects of periodical importance (e.g. ?courtship? and ?religion?), and use very clever structures that are manipulated in order to make the poem read in the desired way. The very clear indication of the theme in question was strongly aided by the way in which the personas portrayed the emotions they felt and the way they showed their attitudes towards the subject. Considering all these factors, the poets made critical arguments to the mistresses in order to alter their views, thus changing their minds, on denying the poets the sex that they desired so strongly.
A poem without any complications can force an author to say more with much less. Although that may sound quite cliché, it rings true when one examines “The Fish” by Elizabeth Bishop. Elizabeth’s Bishop’s poem is on an exceedingly straightforward topic about the act of catching a fish. However, her ability to utilize thematic elements such as figurative language, imagery and tone allows for “The Fish” to be about something greater. These three elements weave themselves together to create a work of art that goes beyond its simple subject.
The speaker uses metaphors to describe his mistress’ eyes to being like the sun; her lips being red as coral; cheeks like roses; breast white as snow; and her voices sounding like music. In the first few lines of the sonnet, the speaker view and tells of his mistress as being ugly, as if he was not attracted to her. He give...
When Andrea leaves the bowl at home, it is assumed that she never places anything inside of it. It is described "in a way, it was perfect: the world cut in half, deep and smoothly empty" (74). Since Andrea's obsessive relationship with the bowl has caused her husband to leave her, the empty and loneliness in her life continues to prosper. She is being held confined of her past. All Andrea can really do now is contemplate "Beattie can fill the bowl, to use a metaphor, with whatever she chooses. She can capture, again and again, the story behind the "one small flash of blue, a vanishing point on the horizon" (Charles E May, 215). These quotes symbolizes that she has dealt with her past and has finally moved on. The understatement "the bowl was just a bowl. She did not believe that one second. What she believed was that it was something she loved"(73). She believed that the bowl was a fortune, that it gave her good luck. She also believed that it was a mystery of something she truly admires. In otherwise, "Andrea may feel such a deep connection to the bowl less because it represents the lost loves then because it reflects her own empty, passive condition"(Milne, 167). The connection Andrea is starting to feel towards the bowl starts to add up to the entire love one she has lost in her life, representing the lonely, submissive condition
Authors use poetry to creatively present attitudes and opinions. “A Man’s Requirements,” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and “A Letter to Her Husband, Absent upon Public Employment” are two poems with distinct attitudes about love that contain different literary approaches. In both of the poems, love is addressed from a different perspective, producing the difference in expectation and presentation, but both suggest the women are subservient in the relationships.
In Wendy Cope’s poem, “Lonely Hearts”, the narrator is in search for love. The narrator gives a description in each stanza of people she would not mind finding love in. Abstract diction is used in this poem a lot because the narrator is looking for love. Love is not an object; however, it is an abstract idea. The narrator has a wish that they can find love soon. The narrator says, “Can someone make my simple wish come true?” (398). The use of the word “simple” is rather a strange choice of wording being that finding love is not normally described as simple. The narrator then illustrates the type of people she would not mind falling in love with. The descriptions of people are quite broad and show the narrator does not have much of a type.