The Fish, by Elizabeth Bishop

When I first read this poem, all I had in mind was only poetry about a fisherman who had successfully caught an extremely big fish. Yet, I tried to reread it over and over again to uncover the ‘magical’ things hid by Bishop through her tremendous experience of catching a fish.

Known as an independent artist and her interest of surrealism, Bishop explored the description of the fish in outstanding ways as if we, the reader, were the fisherman who caught that tremendous fish. Her details of the fish’s skin, gills, flesh, eyes, lips, and the old hooks were so incredibly specified. Each of her descriptions appeared such a crystal-clear imagery in my imagination.

Reading deeply into the poetry itself, I found out what she meant by her belief that literature should address that world beyond life’s limitations; this poem is not as simply telling the readers that a fisherman had caught a fish, but it’s all about the things beyond the vivid descriptions Bishop conveyed through this beautiful poem.

It’s about a chronicles of life, where we can find hopes and fears, wisdom and victory. The fisherman caught a big fish, yet from the fisherman’s descriptions about the fish he had caught, they reveal the real struggle of living a life. The fish is caught in fear, he just surrender his life with no fight, since he had won at least five previous fights (the old hooks in his lips). While the fisherman, after catching the tremendous fish, hoping to earn some money from the fish, but by his clear visual rendering of the picture that goes beyond his imagination, he obtains the wisdom of life (even he can see the rainbows—from the oil spread in the water and from the fish), so he let the fish go and achieved his victory by catching a big fish and letting him go. Nice poem!