The Fish

by Elizabeth Bishop

A poem.

Genres: Poetry, School

3 pages, Unknown Binding

First published January 1, 1946

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Elizabeth Bishop was an American poet and writer from Worcester, Massachusetts. She was the Poet Laureate of the United States from 1949 to 1950, a Pulitzer Prize winner in 1956. and a National Book Award Winner for Poetry in 1970. She is considered one of the most important and distinguished American poets of the 20th century.

Reviews

[livia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rep: N/A
TW: slight gore (fish)

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My Rating: 2.5 stars rounded up

- I was falling asleep reading this, annotating this and answering questions on this. The imagery was good but otherwise, it did not catch my interest.

[Z · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fish

[Lily · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this one better than some of the other Modernist poems I had to read. It was very interesting how Bishop used the colors... the color of its tattered skin, the colors of the barnacles and sea lice covering it, the seaweed, the yellowing eyes, the fishing lines hanging from its jaw, even the oily rainbow at the bottom of the boat and orange of the rust. She also uses color to vividly describe what she imagines the inside of the fish will look like: the white flesh, the black and red entrails, and the pink swim bladder. And all of that comes together to form the rainbow at the end when she decides to let the fish go.

[☆ serethiel ☆ · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars.

[Alien Bookreader · Rating 4 out of 5]

I listened to this poem read by Elizabeth Bishop herself on youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnkD_...

Surprisingly Elizabeth Bishop’s reading of her own poem makes it sound worse than when I read it in my head. Sometimes poetry is better read in silence.

I like the bittersweet optimism of this poem. Like in novels and stories, I like when the protagonist has to survive an impossibly difficult situation. And usually the harder the situation, the more satisfying it is at the end, when the protagonist has survived against all odds. This poem has that theme but condensed into a single moment when you catch a fish and see that it has battle scars and fishing hooks stuck in its body but is still swimming on.

A poem about survival, evading death despite it coming after you again and again. The quiet celebration of overcoming disaster.

At some point when life gets really hard you become like this fish. You are not sad that death has come after you five times, you are happy that you survived five times.

[Jordin Oostenryk]

The Fish by Elizabeth Bishop is about a fisherman who caught an old ugly sickly looking fish who was covered in barnacles and sea lice. Upon inspecting his prey, the fisherman noticed the wear and tear on the old fish represented his battle scars from many previous failed attempts from past fishermen to capture him. He had five fish hooks hanging from his mouth representing the medals he earned from all of his escapes. The man could not bring himself to put an end to this strong sea hero's journey so he set him free, the fish once again escaping his fate.

[krissy · Rating 4 out of 5]

THIS WAS GOOD IMAGERY

read for eng 1102

[katie · Rating 4 out of 5]

i loved the use of color

[Sowon Kim · Rating 4 out of 5]

fish

[Jasmine · Rating 5 out of 5]

I will never recover from reading this poem and examining it through the lens of ecocriticism. 😭

[Frackie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This poem had me in my feelings for the little guy. I was starting to get mad thinking she was gonna write the fish getting eaten or something, but the ending was really nice.