Elizabeth Bishop "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 eight,

battered and venerable

and homely. Here and there

his brown skin hung in stripes

like ancient wallpaper,

and its pattern of darker brown

was like wallpaper:

shapes like full-blown roses

strained 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.


In “The Fish” there is an individual fishing, and happens to catch a large fish. This poem is not about how great of a catch this was for the fisherman, but rather examining the fish. The fish had “brown skin [that] hung in stripes/like ancient wallpaper” which gives an image of how aged the fish had become. Looking along the body of the fish, the fisherman reveals that there are pieces of fishing line and hooks hanging from this ancient fish. He has been caught previously, but by the looks of the line the fish was fighting last time. Seeing the wisdom and years aged in the fish, the fisherman decided to let the fish go. This poem was chosen because I enjoy the idea of the fisherman looking deeper into the fish, and not seeing it only for what it is. There is time and wisdom that the fish possessed, and the fisherman realized this. “The Fish” gave me a sense of peace, and it shows, in more of a human aspect, the respect that elders should receive.