"I caught a tremendous fish" is the first line in Bishop's poem The Fish, and I wondered where this statement was going to take me. It felt like I stand at the entrance of a labyrinth that later unveiled elements of beauty and ugly. In contrast to the beginning, the poem ends with the conclusion "And I let the fish go" which represents a strong decision; and if you only read those two lines you understand that so much had happened in between. What kind of struggle and what revelatory moments the speaker had in order to come to that conclusion?
The beginning and the ending verses are very simplistic statements yet powerful; but the whole poem is very detailed and complex spattered with strong symbols where colors accentuates the abundant imagery (e.g."the dramatic reds and blacks" ; "rags of green weed" ; "pink swim-bladder"). I like how the poet used the "aesthetic of the ugly", two antonym terms which show the beautiful side of something disgusting, ugly. (e.g. "he was speckled with barnacles/fine rosettes of lime"). But isn't it true that we can find beauty in ugly things, we can find positive in terrible experiences, and we can find good in bad people?
The fish was sacred to the Greco-Roman mythology having the symbolic meaning of change and transformation. In Buddhism, it symbolizes happiness and freedom. We can find these symbolic meanings in the poem. The speaker releases the fish in the end, the gesture representing freedom. And we can see the transformation from the beginning of the poem where the speaker was heavy, dark and burdened to the end where "everything was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow".
The beginning and the ending verses are very simplistic statements yet powerful; but the whole poem is very detailed and complex spattered with strong symbols where colors accentuates the abundant imagery (e.g."the dramatic reds and blacks" ; "rags of green weed" ; "pink swim-bladder"). I like how the poet used the "aesthetic of the ugly", two antonym terms which show the beautiful side of something disgusting, ugly. (e.g. "he was speckled with barnacles/fine rosettes of lime"). But isn't it true that we can find beauty in ugly things, we can find positive in terrible experiences, and we can find good in bad people?
The fish was sacred to the Greco-Roman mythology having the symbolic meaning of change and transformation. In Buddhism, it symbolizes happiness and freedom. We can find these symbolic meanings in the poem. The speaker releases the fish in the end, the gesture representing freedom. And we can see the transformation from the beginning of the poem where the speaker was heavy, dark and burdened to the end where "everything was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow".
