hi everyone welcome back to the channel or if you're new then great to have you along in this video we're going to be looking at the elizabeth bishop home the fish this poem is on the syllabus for both ordinary and higher level leaving cert and is one of bishop's most popular and well known she included it in her first collection of poetry north and south published in 1946 bishop herself did not think very highly of it however and in a letter to her friend the poet marianne moore she referred to it as a trifle something unimportant to her this poem however has turned out to be one of her most read and most well-liked poems for a variety of reasons the fish is an excellent example of bishop's conversational style for more on this by the way and characteristics of her poetry more generally please watch my introduction to elizabeth bishop video the link is in the description below the poem begins in a very ordinary way the statement that she caught a fish and ends in an equally ordinary way i let it go but what happens in the intervening 72 lines is again a perfect example of bishop's style she describes this moment between catching a fish and letting it go in exact detail and the fish itself too through her detailed description of the fish something entirely ordinary she creates a sense of revelation an epiphany an epiphany is a moment of great realization like let's say a light bulb moment where she realizes that in nature we are all one and that her successes and achievements are like the fishes something to be celebrated she feels close to the fish metaphorically and shows it mercy by letting it go while this poem is written in free verse as many of bishop's poems are free verse being without a set rhyming pattern or consistent meter more like actual speech there is some use of tri-meter which is three metrical feet per line a foot being made up of stressed and unstressed syllables here which gives the poem a patterned sound so simply put although it doesn't rhyme like other poems there is some rhythm in the lines okay so that's the overall idea of the poem but how does bishop do all of this and structure the poem so that it ends with this great realization well let's take a look at the poem line by line and see what's going on so these are the opening lines 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 so the poem opens with a very clear statement and a very clear speaker i caught we also get a sense of the speaker's pride too like a proud hunter or in this case a fisher person showing off their catch this comes from the adjective tremendous it's important to remember that in all poetry anything that appears in the poem is specifically chosen by the poet and so every word every line has a purpose this is even more important with bishop's poetry as we know that she was a perfectionist and prized the exactness of her description the next lines in the opening four simply elaborate on the first the speaker having caught the fish is now attempting to get it into the boat but just pauses at it as it is half out of water the speaker's hook from the fishing line is stuck fast or well lodged in the corner of the fish's mouth these lines emphasize the fact that the fish is caught well caught there's no fear of him getting away his run has come to an end he didn't fight he hadn't fought at all so these next lines are worth paying attention to because of the repetition in them the speaker shifts the focus away from themselves and on to the fish now the fact that the fish hasn't fought and isn't now even at the end shows that it has given up and whether we are used to fishing or not whether we've ever been fishing or not most of us would have an idea in our mind of a fish thrashing around on a line trying desperately to escape or to get back into the water the fact that this particular fish is not doing that presents him as a little bit pathetic we may even feel sympathy for him the closeness in these lines he didn't fight he hadn't fought also emphasizes this another feature of bishop's poetry that is evident in these lines is the distance between the speaker and what it is they are describing the poem opens with a strong eye but that person fades gradually over the course of the poem because they are ultimately unimportant the fish is the star of the show the main attraction this is one of the ways bishop removes herself from her poetry despite the fact that it is most likely a semi-autobiographical poem for more on this take a look at the introduction to bishop video again the link to that is in the description below he hung a grunting weight battered and vulnerable 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 so she begins to describe the fish in these lines and again there are some interesting words used a grunting weight is a wonderful description simple yet so effective the fish is the sort of weight where a person would grunt if they had to carry it the next three adjectives also convey much meaning battered and venerable and homely these adjectives taken together get across to us the fish's status it's a survivor it's been through battles and so deserves respect and it's also been left with the scars of those battles this combined idea of age wisdom and respect is built upon in the rest of these lines his skin is like ancient wallpaper and the word wallpaper is repeated again reiterating how much like old faded wallpaper this fish's skin is this repetition is all part of bishop's commitment to exactness as the american critic helen wendler put it she wants us the reader to see precisely what she does 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 the description continues in these lines and again they emphasize both his age and his homely appearance homely meaning plain or ugly here his skin is covered with barnacles a type of shellfish that attach themselves to things that have been in the water for a long time he was also infested with tiny white sea lice conveying the pathetic nature of the fish this is certainly not a fish in its prime of its life it even has rags of green weeds hanging off it the assonance of the e sound helps to emphasize this as well the green weeds so by the time we get to line 20 we get a picture of this fish that despite his large size and weight he's old and battered quite ugly his skin is covered with marks and blemishes and stains it didn't fight its capture it's simply too old to fight anymore 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 these next lines return us to the speaker the eye in the poem while the fish struggles to breathe the speaker thinks of the fish's coarse white flesh the use of dashes in these lines while his guilds were breathing in the terrible oxygen dash the frightening girls fresh and crisp with blood that can cut so badly dash again they serve as an example of bishop's dedication to being precise when she references his guilds first she just says his guilds were breathing in but she comes back to that to add more detail the frightening gills bishop introduces colour here too with her description of the gills being fresh and crisp with blood color features in the rest of the lines here as she goes on to explain the white of the flesh the reds and blacks of the fish's insides but there's also the interesting simile i thought of the coarse white flesh packed in like feathers there are two reasons why this simile is important i think firstly the flesh of a fish is usually only white after it's been cooked and so here the speaker betrays their viewpoint as someone who is still in hunter mode let's say they're examining this creature with a view to eating it the second reason is comparing the flesh under the fish's skin to feathers in a pillow let's say or a duvet bishop uses familiar domestic images that is things that most people would be familiar with to make this strange creature from under the water more understandable and more relatable to us finally here there's just a quick note on the simile comparing the fish's swim bladder to a peony so the swim bladder is a gas-filled pouch or organ in a fish that helps it to maintain its buoyancy it allows it to to float up and the water and a peony is a type of rose with a large head interestingly in japanese culture the peony is a symbol of bravery and honor lines 32-38 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 eyes and glass so in these lines there is some sort of communication between the fisher person and the fish the hunter and its prey the speaker looked into its eyes and again we get the description the alliterative tarnish tin foil is a brilliant description of that reflective surface at the back of the fish's eye eisenglass is a jelly-like substance that is obtained from fish usually from their swim bladders and it's used in making glue and in the making of ale it's see-through and can be produced in thin sheets resembling panes of glass as you can see in the image above 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 weapon like hung five old pieces of fish line or four in a wire leader with the swivel still attached with all their five big hooks grown firmly in his mouth the lines up to and including these ones from lines 39 to 53 could almost be described as a tour of the anatomy of the fish with the speaker as the tour guide in these lines here the speaker having mentioned the eyes previously says they shifted a little but not to return my stare again this is not about the speaker the speaker is distant and detached the fish's eyes are moving simply because that's what they do it's not conscious of the speaker's presence so this isn't a moment of revelation where fish and speaker look into each other's eyes and find a new respect for one another the fish is entirely unaware of the speaker's presence the speaker goes on to admire his sudden face and the way the fish's jaw works there is the beginnings of a softening in the speaker's attitude to this fish though whereas previously it was described as homely and the speaker thought of the fish in terms of food and what it would be like when it was gutted now the speaker admires it and it is at this point that the speaker notices five old pieces of fish line and the hooks in these lines were all grown firmly in his mouth this reveals to us that this fish has been caught before and survived battles with other fishermen and women it has fought and escaped five times previously and the lines from earlier saying he didn't fight he hadn't fought at all now have a new resonance or a new meaning 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 snapped when it broke and he got away these lines detail his escapes the different lines that he broke to escape each detail of the line builds up the heroics and the bravery of the fish it may seem excessive or even unnecessary to detail the colors and the types of the lines but through doing this bishop is conveying the idea of all the different people that this fish has interacted with and escaped from it enhances the heroics and the bravery of the fish like medals with their ribbons frayed and wavering a five-haired beard of wisdom trailing from his aching jaw this simile is the central one in the whole poem and communicates just how the poet now sees the fish like a brave warrior who has come through battle each of these fishing lines he wears on his chin like a medal on a soldier's bravery showing the campaigns he has served in and the things that he has been rewarded for the description of the five-haired beard of wisdom builds upon the idea started earlier in the poem about this fish's age and with that age the wisdom and respect that should come the use of the adjective aching is interesting too it seems unlikely that the fish's jaw would literally be aching from these hooks attached to it and it seems unlikely too that it would be something the speaker would say instead if we examine it metaphorically we could infer that the aching here is an accumulation of age and experience the fish is tired it's no longer strong enough to fight here there could perhaps also be an echo of the poet's own experience her weariness of life perhaps 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 baler rusted orange the sun cracked thwarts the ore locks on their strings the gunnels until everything was rainbow rainbow rainbow and i let the fish go in these final lines we have a transformation of the poet's attitude to the fish instead of seeing it merely as food the speaker feels a sense of camaraderie with this fish that it too is a survivor and that it deserves respect and dignity the ordinariness and ugliness of this scene the pool of bilge the rusted engine the sun cracked warts are all transformed by this epiphany this realization that there is joy and celebration in life and nature if you look for it and can use the correct language to describe it here the victory is as much the fish's victory over the fisherman who tried to catch him as much as it is the speaker's own victory in recognizing this moment of great importance the repetition too of rainbow is emphasizing the same thing and the poem closes with that final line i let the fish go so there we are that's bishops the fish and as you can see there are some examples of her style that i went through in the introduction to bishop video at the beginning of this series we can see her use of precise detail her commitment to exactness as well as the gradual distancing of the speaker from the subject and the surface of the poem we also notice a shift in the poem that is a feature of many of bishop's poems the hunter develops an appreciation of the fish and subsequently sees the world in a new way i hope that you found this video useful in your study of bishop please subscribe if you want to know when new videos are released and don't forget to like and comment i'll talk to you guys again very soon