This is one of the first poems I ever copied down in a journal. It made me see the world differently. It made me start paying attention to and looking for the beauty in the details. It changed the way I wrote and the way I thought about the world. Read it slowly.<\/p>\n
The Fish
\nby Elizabeth Bishop<\/b><\/p>\n
I caught a tremendous fish
\nand held him beside the boat
\nhalf out of water, with my hook
\nfast in a corner of its mouth.
\nHe didn\u2019t fight.
\nHe hadn\u2019t fought at all.
\nHe hung a grunting weight,
\nbattered and venerable
\nand homely. Here and there
\nhis brown skin hung in strips
\nlike ancient wallpaper,
\nand its pattern of darker brown
\nwas like wallpaper:
\nshapes like full-blown roses
\nstained and lost through age.
\nHe was speckled with barnacles,
\nfine rosettes of lime,
\nand infested
\nwith tiny white sea-lice,
\nand underneath two or three
\nrags of green weed hung down.
\nWhile his gills were breathing in
\nthe terrible oxygen
\n\u2014 the frightening gills,
\nfresh and crisp with blood,
\nthat can cut so badly \u2014
\nI thought of the coarse white flesh
\npacked in like feathers,
\nthe big bones and the little bones,
\nthe dramatic reds and blacks
\nof his shiny entrails,
\nand the pink swim-bladder
\nlike a big peony.
\nI looked into his eyes
\nwhich were far larger than mine
\nbut shallower, and yellowed,
\nthe irises backed and packed
\nwith tarnished tinfoil
\nseen through the lenses
\nof old scratched isinglass.
\nThey shifted a little, but not
\nto return my stare.
\n\u2014 It was more like the tipping
\nof an object toward the light.
\nI admired his sullen face,
\nthe mechanism of his jaw,
\nand then I saw
\nthat from his lower lip
\n\u2014 if you could call it a lip \u2014
\ngrim, wet, and weaponlike,
\nhung five old pieces of fish-line,
\nor four and a wire leader
\nwith the swivel still attached,
\nwith all their five big hooks
\ngrown firmly in his mouth.
\nA green line, frayed at the end
\nwhere he broke it, two heavier lines,
\nand a fine black thread
\nstill crimped from the strain and snap
\nwhen it broke and he got away.
\nLike medals with their ribbons
\nfrayed and wavering,
\na five-haired beard of wisdom
\ntrailing from his aching jaw.
\nI stared and stared
\nand victory filled up
\nthe little rented boat,
\nfrom the pool of bilge
\nwhere oil had spread a rainbow
\naround the rusted engine
\nto the bailer rusted orange,
\nthe sun-cracked thwarts,
\nthe oarlocks on their strings,
\nthe gunnels \u2014 until everything
\nwas rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!
\nAnd I let the fish go.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This is one of the first poems I ever copied down in a journal. It made me see the world differently. It made me start paying attention to and looking for the beauty in the details. It changed the way I wrote and the way I thought about the world. Read it slowly. The Fish by Elizabeth Bishop I caught a tremendous fish and held him beside the boat half out of water, with my hook fast in a corner of its mouth. He didn\u2019t fight. He hadn\u2019t fought at all. He hung a grunting weight, battered and venerable and...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[28],"class_list":["post-1131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-poetrythursday"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1131","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1131"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1131\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5312,"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1131\/revisions\/5312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}