Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Floral Imagery in "The Fish"
One thing I noticed as I read "The Fish" by Elizabeth Bishop is her unexpected use of floral imagery. Flowers tend to carry connotations of beauty--I am personally particularly fond of peonies, to which the speaker compares the fish's "swim-bladder" (32). Because the majority of the imagery of the poem centers on the somewhat repulsive, scaly, underwatery-ness of the fish, my mind gave a little jolt when I came across lines like "shapes like full-blown roses" (14) and "fine rosettes of lime" (17). This last is followed immediately by "and infested/with tiny white sea-lice" (18-19), a sharply contrasting image. The speaker seems to be struggling to simultaneously portray the fish as what it literally is (ugly) and what it metaphorically or symbolically represents (the beauty and strength of nature triumphing over insignificant human endeavors).
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Yes, I agree with the merging modes of representation in "The Fish." I also agree with critic Zachariah Pickard, who argues that the imagery, the exercise in perception and description, evokes the tangibility of a complicated reality. In his mind the fish becomes more real and less "fish" through the literary.
ReplyDeleteAlso present in the poem is Bishop's propensity to rely on close observation to achieve small, yet worthwhile, epiphanies however momentary they may be--small "victories" as the speaker observes.
I gave notice to the imagery in this poem too- it was one of my favorites in this packet. I appreciate a lot of the heavy imagery that Bishop uses when she's observing the simpler actions in life. It's almost as if the poem is in the view of a new-comer who has yet to see such amazing simple beauty. I think this instance is another of beauty in the ugly too- like you said with the descriptions of the less appealing parts of the fish.
ReplyDelete