TRB 15. The Fish by Elizabeth Bishop

[Suzanne]

This thread is part of "The Rattle Bag 20" If you would like more information you can find it here: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=15198



Summertime Greetings,

I hope all is well with you, Poets. My simple statement of the day is this:

It is green.

Wahoo!

It is a short lived Utopic time this far north so we stay up late and stay outside as often as possible. For most, July is spent at cottages on secluded lakes.
Finland has 187,888 lakes, this doesn't take into account swamps and marsh lands or the fact that it has the largest archipelago in Europe.
So, of course, fishing is a common pastime and fresh fish can be found easily at the market. July means time for fish!


And so, I offer this poem for your consideration, it is one of Peter's Rattle Bag favorites.

Enjoy,
Suzanne




The Fish

I caught a tremendous fish
and held him beside the boat
half out of water, with my hook
fast in a corner of his mouth.
He didn't fight.
He hadn't fought at all.
He hung a grunting weight,
battered and venerable
and homely. Here and there
his brown skin hung in strips
like ancient wallpaper,
and its pattern of darker brown
was like wallpaper:
shapes like full-blown roses
stained and lost through age.
He was speckled and barnacles,
fine rosettes of lime,
and infested
with tiny white sea-lice,
and underneath two or three
rags of green weed hung down.
While his gills were breathing in
the terrible oxygen
--the frightening gills,
fresh and crisp with blood,
that can cut so badly--
I thought of the coarse white flesh
packed in like feathers,
the big bones and the little bones,
the dramatic reds and blacks
of his shiny entrails,
and the pink swim-bladder
like a big peony.
I looked into his eyes
which were far larger than mine
but shallower, and yellowed,
the irises backed and packed
with tarnished tinfoil
seen through the lenses
of old scratched isinglass.
They shifted a little, but not
to return my stare.
--It was more like the tipping
of an object toward the light.
I admired his sullen face,
the mechanism of his jaw,
and then I saw
that from his lower lip
--if you could call it a lip
grim, wet, and weaponlike,
hung five old pieces of fish-line,
or four and a wire leader
with the swivel still attached,
with all their five big hooks
grown firmly in his mouth.
A green line, frayed at the end
where he broke it, two heavier lines,
and a fine black thread
still crimped from the strain and snap
when it broke and he got away.
Like medals with their ribbons
frayed and wavering,
a five-haired beard of wisdom
trailing from his aching jaw.
I stared and stared
and victory filled up
the little rented boat,
from the pool of bilge
where oil had spread a rainbow
around the rusted engine
to the bailer rusted orange,
the sun-cracked thwarts,
the oarlocks on their strings,
the gunnels--until everything
was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!
And I let the fish go.

Elizabeth Bishop

taken from http://www.poemhunter.com/

[gavin]

this is a poem

in terms of advanced mental knowledge

because from the time she caught to the time she let it go;
her description is very autistic savant like;

as for the poem it is, se brilliant, because of her descriptions about every little second

every mute detail is there i liked it very much;

[JohnLott]

Hi Suzanne,
Perhaps Peter can say why he admired this work?
I found the pace pedestrian, the mood dull.

I was unhappy with the sense of this:
"....shapes like full-blown roses
stained and lost through age.
He was speckled and barnacles,
fine rosettes of lime,
and infested
with tiny white sea-lice,
...."

Catching a fish can be a dramatic, adrenalin rush moment; I have lived it,Hemmingway made it so.
But not here by Elizabeth Bishop. This was melancholic. Even so, I agree the fish had to be set free.

With different punctuation and longer lines this is surely a prose poem?

Not one of my twenty.



J.

[David]

I'm with Peter on this. I love this poem.

Catching a fish can be a dramatic, adrenalin rush moment; I have lived it,Hemmingway made it so.
But not here by Elizabeth Bishop.

It's not about the catching, though, is it, John? It's the contemplation of what's been caught. An epiphany, if ever I saw one.

[JohnLott]

Catching a fish can be a dramatic, adrenalin rush moment; I have lived it,Hemmingway made it so.
But not here by Elizabeth Bishop.

It's not about the catching, though, is it, John? It's the contemplation of what's been caught.

I think it's about the catching most certainly. I'll concede that there is admiration in what has been caught. But that's as far as it goes; I don't agree with her blandness, so I don't agree with you on this.

Other aspects:

"...He didn't fight.
He hadn't fought at all.
He hung a grunting weight,
battered and venerable
and homely....."

Rainbow trout are sport, they fight.


"...the frightening gills,"

What is frightening about gills?

"...I thought of the coarse white flesh
packed in like feathers,
the big bones and the little bones,
the dramatic reds and blacks
of his shiny entrails,
and the pink swim-bladder
like a big peony...."

I don't think Fishermen think about this. This is so pedestrian.



J.

[Nash]

Not one of my top 20, but an outstanding poem nonetheless.

I agree with David on this one, it's not about catching a fish, or even the fish itself. For me it's about seeing something for the first time. As David says, an epiphany.

The protagonist may have caught similar fish a hundred times before, but only seen them as sport or food. This time they actually see the fish and their eyes are opened to the beauty in everything, even the oil slick spilling from the rusted engine in that wonderful ending.

Actually, the more I think about this poem the more I wish that I'd put it in my top 20!

John, take your fisherman's head off and read it with your poet's head instead.

Nash.

[Milu]

This is one of my favorite poems, because Bishop has the ability to admire things without romanticizing them. She describes something as being aged, but doesn't go through the motions of making it something desirable or beautiful. If anyone likes this poem, they should check out "At The Fish Houses."

I especially like this part:

"I looked into his eyes
which were far larger than mine
but shallower, and yellowed,
the irises backed and packed
with tarnished tinfoil
seen through the lenses
of old scratched isinglass."

Although the fish is noble and aged, she doesn't see any wisdom or nobility behind its eyes. It seems that all of its "noble" features have been thrust upon it through decay, but the fish isn't bright enough to comprehend how it is noble.

I also found it interesting that she talked about the oil producing a rainbow. I believe that Walt Whitman and TS Eliot mentioned a similar thing in their poems. I believe the oil thing has something to do with poets trying to connect to their time, and see the romance in things, even things that are traditionally seen as being ugly. Without romantic green fields to frolic around in, poets had to come to terms with the fact that they lived in an industrial mess, and attempted to derive some beauty from that.

[JohnLott]

David, Nash, Milu:

good arguments and opinion that puts me in the minority; but I stand.

Milu's extract on the eyes is the best part of the poem, other than Bishop setting the aged gentleman free.



J.

[Milu]

I think that one aspect of good writing is the ability to subvert expectations, and in that sense I think this poem is a success. We all want and expect a fish to go out fighting, because we think that's how we're going to go out. However, I think what Bishop was trying to say though the fish's lack of fight is that he was tired of living and gave up. If you think about it through that lens, the ending is a bit ambiguous. I mean she felt a great sense of self-gratification letting the old fish go, but did the old fish actually want to live? Maybe the narrator was a heartless harpie, letting an old creature suffer while patting herself on the back.

Horray ambiguity.

[brianedwards]

it's not about catching a fish

Amazing that that even needs stating really.
Extraordinary poem. Extraordinary poet.

B.

[Arian]

It's the contemplation of what's been caught. An epiphany, if ever I saw one.

Yes, quite. Agree completely.
Her ability to evocate, if that's a word, a sort of profound animal connection with the fish, to - on some level - empathise with it, understand it, express feelings not merely for it, but almost as it, is simply amazing, to my mind. One emerges from the poem feeling that, in some small, fleeting way one has actually been the fish. A simply superb piece of work, all the better for it's simple, "bland" language. Many of us could learn from her lack of pretension.

Cheers
peter

[Arian]

Extraordinary poem. Extraordinary poet.
B.

Yep. Dead right.
p

[brianedwards]

Many of us could learn from her lack of pretension.

peter

Yep. Dead right.



B.

[JohnLott]

"..I stared and stared
and victory filled up
the little rented boat,"

Whose victory?

If it's not about catching the fish, why was she fishing and why was there a 'victory'?



J.

[Suzanne]

Thank you for contributing to this thread. It is very rewarding to hear the banter confirm or challenge the reader, which is us.

I have grown to love this poem though admit that after the first read or so, I didn't see it. Like John, I saw it a bit mundane if talking about catching a fish, big deal.

But it is about meeting a fish, not catching and eating a fish. it is about playing the role of fisherman while on holiday, not about being a fisherman.

the descriptions are so feminine in expression, it's delightful...it is not the sporty phrases you would expect.

"his brown skin hung in strips
like ancient wallpaper,
and its pattern of darker brown
was like wallpaper:
shapes like full-blown roses
stained and lost through age.
He was speckled and barnacles,
fine rosettes of lime,
and infested
with tiny white sea-lice,
and underneath two or three
rags of green weed hung down."

These lines are magnificent.
I have seen photos of these old fish and find the poem quite accurate.

This is high on my list from The Rattle Bag. Yep.

(welcome Milu. you are pleasantly chatty, it's quite wonderful)

warmly,
Suzanne

[JohnLott]

Very reasonable view Suzanne, which I wouldn't want to argue with.

The form of 'barnacles' in this part seems wrong and not commented upon by other posts:

"...He was speckled and barnacles,
fine rosettes of lime,
and infested..."

Any offers?



J.

[David]

The form of 'barnacles' in this part seems wrong and not commented upon by other posts:

"...He was speckled and barnacles,
fine rosettes of lime,
and infested..."

Any offers?

Well spotted (or speckled), John. It's just a typo. It should be

He was speckled with barnacles

And the victory is the fish's. The N's feelings must be rather how the sailors felt, when they realised that they had Dionysus aboard their boat. So what I described as an epiphany may actually have been a theophany.