Скачать или смотреть POSTCOLONIAL LITERATURES IN ENGLISH B A ENGLISH SEM 5(LECTURE -22)POEM -8 THE FISH PART 1

Elizabeth Bishop was born in Worcester,Massachusetts.She met the poet Marianne Moore when she was studied in college and struck up a deep friendship with her. At the beginning of her literary career she was influenced by George Herbert and Gerard Manley Hopkins. Robert Lowell too became her lifelong friend.She fell ill on a trip to South America and stayed back in Brazil which became her home for the next eighteen years.Her first volume of poetry, North and South was published in 1946.Her other poetry collections are A Cold Spring, Questions of Travel, Geography III. She was a keen observer of birds and animals.Her abiding passion for the animal world is evident in ‘The Fish’.Her deep interest in the world around her is seen in her minute and objective observation and accurate description.This objectivity helped her to identify herself with the sights and sounds of nature and give expression to them while displaying emotional restraint.


• ‘The Fish’ is a first-person narrative poem based on an incident that took place in Florida where Bishop lived for four years. The poem is about a fishing trip and describes how the poet caught a ‘tremendous fish’ and held it beside the boat without hauling it in. She started at it for a long time while going through varied emotions in her mind – detachment, fascination, and finally sympathy for his battle-worn fish. She examined it closely. It was old, gnarled, heavy, unattractive and bore the signs of earlier struggles. As she gazed at the fish, she began to see him in human terms – an old and wrinkled man who has weathered many hardships in life. The fish becomes a symbol of endurance, victory and survival in the battle of life.