Elizabeth Bishop's poem "The Fish" reminds me of a the connection Virginia Woolf draws between developing an idea and catching a fish in "A Room of One's Own." Woolf relates ideas to fish in the sense that the fisherman casts his line into the water, then waits patiently for it to catch hold of something. However, any outside disturbance that causes him to lose his focus results in a loss of the fish as well. This is the same for an idea; if something outside of our focus range calls for our attention we lose whatever idea that was developing as it slowly sinks back into the water, waiting to be rediscovered. In Bishop's poem, the speaker latches onto an idea, symbolized as a fish; however, this fish had "five old pieces of fish-line" attached to its lip that were "still crimped from the strain and snap/ when it broke and he got away." The speaker is not the first to catch hold of this idea. Therefore, he/she "let the fish go."
Elizabeth Bishop's poem "The Fish" reminds me of a the connection Virginia Woolf draws between developing an idea and catching a fish in "A Room of One's Own." Woolf relates ideas to fish in the sense that the fisherman casts his line into the water, then waits patiently for it to catch hold of something. However, any outside disturbance that causes him to lose his focus results in a loss of the fish as well. This is the same for an idea; if something outside of our focus range calls for our attention we lose whatever idea that was developing as it slowly sinks back into the water, waiting to be rediscovered. In Bishop's poem, the speaker latches onto an idea, symbolized as a fish; however, this fish had "five old pieces of fish-line" attached to its lip that were "still crimped from the strain and snap/ when it broke and he got away."
ReplyDeleteThe speaker is not the first to catch hold of this idea. Therefore, he/she "let the fish go."