Client’s Name Professor’s Name Course Title Date Introduction Elizabeth Bishop, born in 1911, was a rather marginalia and obscure figure in the American literature even though she won the Pulitzer Award with her fellow poets Robert Lowell and Marianne Moore. She attained literally prominence just a few years before her death. Since then her prominent and critical reputation has changed and grown to a point of being considered as one of the best American poets in the twentieth century. Bishop was always controlled and reticent in her verses unlike the other poets around her confessional poetry.
Her style is characterized by testicles and precise description of world. Her poems which are peculiarly lucid explore the struggles and dislocation belong somewhere in the world. Bishop, in her lifetime as a perfectionist produced 101 poems most of which are masterpieces that Include the Fish. Poetry Analysis Exploring the patterns that are created and developed by formal elements such as metaphors, tone, and image of the poem’s alliteration help us to deeply understand the meaning of the poem and the nuances which enrich that meaning.
This formal reading of a poem is fundamental to the analysis of poetry. This includes allegory, assonance, irony and symbols which work in more than two ways: something in its original form or something that suggests a deeper meaning. It Is crucial to know the difference between a metaphor and a symbol. Denotation and connotations should also be considered. This is because some words mean something else or have hidden meanings. For example In this poem, the word greasy Is used to mean the dirt and oil in the water (Monitor 150).
The Fish The poem, “The Fish” by Elizabeth Bishop is arguably a simple and complicated poem about a speaker that catches a fish, and then scrutinizes it before letting it go. The speaker at first explains that a fish is a relic which is a living diary associated with the physical layers of the sea lice and barnacles that he characterizes with his brown skin. However, the richness of this poem’s Imagery causes us to observe and evaluate its transformation from a deeper perspective.
The gradual transformation of the speaker from comparing himself to a fish to a person that appreciates its beauty and power is an ecstatic and mystical way (Ellis 60). This poem Is about the Interactions of nature and humanity by revealing the complicity and mystery of beauty and power thin nature. The tone of the speaker shifts throughout the poem. Her lines are relatively short and nondescript at the beginning. But language becomes descriptive by indulging In more similes and metaphors when the speaker begins to carefully examine the fish.
Towards the end Bishop is lost in a fanciful musing (McCabe 45). The transformation of the speaker Is based on the writer’s perspective and not the changes in the fish. The fish only hangs from the hook while trying to gulp for air. However, the speaker slowly develops a gentle appreciation for the fish which is ‘Offs appears unattractive at first. The speaker gets a sense of victory after realizing that this fish survived around five human conquests. This victory is further complicated by not only the achieving what other fishing enthusiasts failed to but also the appreciation of natures beauty and power.
The fish is extraordinary throughout the poem because the speaker releases it into beautiful and toxic water suggesting the dangers of the world that is rich as in possibility (Packard 63). But the speaker like the fish survives these threats. The writer gained a keener vision by transforming the rusty boat she rented into a beautiful spectacle. She draws forth the speaker’s victory over both the repressed thread and the fish that he symbolized as the unexplained events in the poem. This includes the oil patterns in the water that is not a beautiful image and it is through this oil that the speaker sees the rainbow.
Bishop simultaneously introduces other structure while picturing the water and fish around the bout using controlled and constructive language in these mysterious circumstances. This is also the subject that exalts the poem (Packard 64). It is also important to understand the cultural context of the poem to critically analyze it. These include the political, cultural and social environments that surround the writer. Bishop gained fame and complements for her poetry and yet her readers did not know that she was also a visual artist. Her passion was for water color panting that continued throughout her life.
These visual diaries which were sometimes humorously quirk and cynical provide useful information into her darker emotional life caused by family trauma and alcoholism (Bloom 49). Conclusion Bishop was treasure for her spare elegance, precise language and imagery to reveal her thoughts by regularly submitting poetry articles to The New York Magazine. With detachment, solid description and skillful fantasies she developed her works using different emotional states and places that were influenced by depression, lesbianism, alcohol and nomadic travel.
In her poem The Fish, the speaker describes her catch using a mixture of bravado and sympathy as the homely, venerable and battered. This fish, whose mouth is filled with hooks, symbolizes pain that the speaker is confronted with that which is unseen and repressed normally. However, with her lyrical and elaborate description, the speaker is read as the artist with the ability of hanging the anguish of an intelligent verse in regard to the speaker’s wisdom.
As the writer celebrates her mastery and ability over the fish, this poem ends with the suggestion that creativity can be produced via suffering, and destruction. This poem, on the basic level, is a twist from a classic fishing story. The big one which escaped never became a subject in this regard before. It is a beautiful and repulsive, powerless and powerful, and terrified and terrifying narrative. It actually embodies nature because it uses mysterious while employing the fundamental functions for imaginative reverie.
While it is of an ancient era it is also alive causing the reader of the poem to closely scrutinize and deeply contemplate nature like the speaker does. Works Cited Bloom, Harold. Elizabeth Bishop. Cambridge : Infernos Publishing, 2009. Ellis, Jonathan. Art and Memory in the Work of Elizabeth Bishop. Burnham: Seagate Publishing, 2006. McCabe, Susan. Elizabeth Bishop: Her Poetics of Loss. Pennsylvania: Poetic Career Transformed. North Carolina : McFarland, 2012. Packard, Zachary. Elizabeth Bishop’s Poetics of Description. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s Press, 2009.
