According to critic Lloyd Schwarty Bishop is frimly in the
ut pictura poesis tradition. That is, the use of Nature is like
art, as in a painting or in a poem; nature, like art speaks to the viewer or
reader. Elizabeth Bishop wants the readers of her poem "The Fish" to read the world
around them.
Thus, in Bishop's poem, the speaker, who at
first is merely fishing and catches the "battered and venerable" large fish, examines
this creature of nature, noticing the various patterns and colors he possesses, much
like a work of art:
Here and there
his
brown skin hung in strips
like ancient wallpaper....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.
And, as the speaker
examines the "tremendous fish," she is filled with sympathy and awe at the majesty and
bravado of the creature who has overcome several attempts at capturing him as she looks
at the five pieces of wire and line "Like medals with their ribbons." Furthermore, as
she "stared and stared," everything becomes "rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!" and
she releases the fish to the lake. This rainbow represents the victory of not only the
fish, but of the speaker, as well. For, she has read the world of nature and learned to
appreciate its beauty and sympathize with it. Clearly, Elizabeth Bishop's poem is verse
that is truly beautiful, deeply sympathetic to nature.
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