Question

Analyze the elements of modernist poetry in Elizabeth Bishop’s poem "The Fish."

Answer 1

In her poem “The Fish,” Bishop describes her emotions when she catches a big fish and observes it carefully. The poet’s imagist style is found in her detailed description of the fish that she caught:

its pattern of darker brown

was like wallpaper:

shapes like full-blown roses

stained and lost through age.

Instead of using a specific rhyme scheme to give the poem a musical quality, Bishop uses literary devices, such as alliteration, to create rhythm in her poem:

still crimped from the strain and snap

She also creates a musical rhythm within the lines by using assonance:

frayed and wavering,

a five-haired beard of wisdom

trailing from his aching jaw.

I stared and stared.

-SAMPLE ANSWER FROM PLATO/EDMENTUM

Answer 2

The Fish is a free verse poem about the getting and arriving of a major fish, which Elizabeth Bishop most likely caught, all things considered, amid one of her many angling trips in Florida.

This one stanza lyric stretches down the page and is loaded with distinctive symbolism and metaphorical language, the writer diving deep into the demonstration of the catch and thinking of a brilliantly suggestive end.

In any case, the writer had her questions about this lyric. In a letter to her companion Marianne Moore she composed: I am sending you a genuine "fool" ["The Fish"].

Critical appraisal of the sonnet throughout the years has for the most part been sure. Many have said this is a standout amongst the best of Bishop's lyrics since it contains lines of splendid perception and sharp understanding.

Her utilization of the poetic device and the straightforwardness with which substance makes structure gives the work fulfilling culmination when perusing so anyone might hear, yet additionally offers the peruser a sample of secret.

One commentator from the ongoing past appreciated the lyric yet invested to an extreme degree an excessive amount of energy questioning the real types of fish that had been gotten. He in the long run chose it must be a grouper, an enormous mouthed ocean bass that lives on the ocean bottom.

Whatever the species, this lyric brings to the surface numerous incredible pictures and will inspire heaps of inquiries from the peruser.