Listen to Elizabeth Bishop reading her poem, “The Fish,” as you read along.
Being raised by grandparents and great-grandparents, I was fortunate to spend summers at Lake Arrowhead. Before we had a boat of our own, we would rent little fishing motor boats. When I first read this poem, I thought to myself, “I’ve encountered this fish. I know its weary victory.” To this day, this poem remains a soulful favorite both for its tale and its technical wonder.
This 76 line poem consists of a 15 beautifully crafted sentences—count the end marks. There are no stanza breaks here. Only imagery that propels along on this journey with a fisherman on a lake. In the first four lines of the poem, the fisherman introduces us to the tremendous fish, first as a weight dangling from a hook in its mouth. Can you see the fish? Do you feel its weight? The word fast here means firmly fixed and is the perfect choice.
Next comes two short sentences—both about relinquishing the urge to fight—to throw us full force into the sight of the this fish who has seen this battle before. And the grunting weight is venerable—deserving respect.
Next comes a colossal simile. The skin of this fish is compared to ancient patterned wallpaper, once lively and lovely, hanging limply on a wall. Amazing. Does this help you see the dull scaly skin of this fish? And here the speaker gives us some texture to feel with the tips of our fingers: barnacles, sea lice, green seaweed.
And then we are peering at the gills, at once struggling for oxygen and presenting a sharp danger.
Next the fisherman (the speaker of the poem) considers the inside of this fish, comparing its flesh to tightly packed feathers, and its swim bladder to a peony. Are you seeing what he sees?
Now the fisherman looks into the large metalic eyes of the fish, and spews forth the most wonderful word in the poem—isinglass. This fish has old and scratched lenses that remind the fisherman of isinglass, a word he would most certainly be familiar with because it is a form of collagen obtained from the dried swim bladder of fish. If you’ve ever seen mica, dried fish bladders look similar. Maybe this is why isinglass can also refer to thin sheets of mica!
Here, with the eyes, we reach the turn of the poem, where the eyes of the fish courageously reach for the light, with a broodiness that causes us to root for it! And the fisherman is with us, noticing the five hooks embedded in its mouth. This battle weary fish is suddenly enobled in the eyes of the fisherman, and frankly in the eyes of this reader. Can you feel the tug at the line recalling the “strain and snap” that caused the crip in one of the lines dangling from the hook?
“I stared and stared…” says the fisherman, and the battle is won with a rainbow promise.
And the fish is set free.
The Fish, by Elizabeth Bishop
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 with 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.
~Kimberly