the poetic ‘‘I.’’ Notably, while modernism began as
a European movement that gained ground in the
United States, confessional poetry is a uniquely
American movement. Also, unlike modernism, it
is an entirely literary movement with little reso-
nance in the visual arts. Although confessional
poetry is no longer a prevailing movement, its
influence on contemporary poetry is as deeply
felt as the influence of modernism. Leading con-
fessional poets of the 1950s and 1960s include
Robert Lowell, John Berryman, Anne Sexton,
and Sylvia Plath.
Critical Overview.
Although ‘‘The Fish’’ was first published in the
Partisan Reviewin 1940, it did not appear in book
form until the 1946 release of Bishop’s first poetry
collection,North and South. The collection was an
immense critical success, vaulting Bishop to the
forefront of the American modernist movement.
Indeed, based solely on the strength of this collec-
tion and her work in periodicals, Bishop held the
equivalent post of United States poet laureate from
1949 to 1950. Furthermore, whenNorth and South
was released again in 1955 as a tandem edition
titledPoems: North & South— A Cold Spring,
the reissued volume garnered Bishop a Pulitzer
Prize in 1956.
It is no surprise that Marianne Moore, Bish-
op’s friend and mentor, applaudedNorth and
Southupon its initial release. In a 1946Nation
review of the collection, Moore declares: ‘‘At last
we have a prize book that has no creditable man-
nerisms. At last we have someone who knows,
who is not didactic.’’ Discussing ‘‘The Fish’’ in the
Virginia Quarterly Review, Nathan A. Scott, Jr.,
notes that ‘‘perhaps the most notable instance in
Bishop’s poetry of [her] genius for empathy is the
great poem inNorth and Souththat has been so
frequently anthologized, ‘The Fish.’’’ Further
commenting on the triumph described in the
poem, Scott remarks that ‘‘the greater victory
surely belongs to the poet herself who... succeeds
in quelling the sportswoman’s aggressiveness to
the point of being able to respond to that in this
creature which asks to be saluted and admired.’’
Notably, critical response to the ‘‘The Fish’’
varies most when the poem’s last line is considered.
In an ambivalent analysis of ‘‘The Fish’’ in theNew
York Review of Books, Michael Wood notes Bish-
op’s ‘‘perfect poise.’’ Yet, he also states: ‘‘Of course
the fish must be let go, I don’t quarrel with the
sentiment. Such a victory would be ruined if it
ended in possession. But the abrupt last line—
deliberately unprepared for, deliberately prosaic,
reinforced by a rhyme which seems to separate
rather than to link the elements of the couplet—
has the effect of a slap on the wrist.’’ Despite
this complaint, Wood comments: ‘‘To be sure,
nothing could spoil this marvelous poem.’’ Still,
he repeated his complaint once more, finding
that the poem’s last line ‘‘is just too bumpy
and monosyllabic... and I prefer to think Bishop
intends the effect she gets.’’ He adds: ‘‘It is the
intention which seems rather cramped.’’ Address-
ing this very intention inRaritan, Anne Ferry
inadvertently counters Wood’s objections to it.
She observes that ‘‘the casual sentence fragment
that ends ‘The Fish’ is plainly matter-of-fact, and
matter-of-fact is precisely what [Bishop] claimed
the poem to be.’’
In her lengthy review of ‘‘The Fish,’’ Ferry
largely discusses why and how the poem became
Bishop’s most anthologized work. She notes that
‘‘the sheer amount of space given to ‘The Fish’ in
reviews was the clearest signal to anthologists that
among the poems inNorth & South, this one, at
least, should be given room in their collections.’’
Nevertheless, Ferry adds: ‘‘When reviewers tried
to place the poem in relation to others in the book,
they sent anthologists a less intelligible message
about what their choices would say to readers
meeting Bishop’s work probably for the first
time in their collections.’’ She explains that this
was largely due to the fact that the poem ‘‘was
measured against the poems around it, usually to
their disadvantage, by the book’s admirers as
well as its detractors, even as they tried to argue
that the preferred entry was somehow represen-
tative of her work.’’ Like many artists who
become notorious for only one work among
many, Bishop likely resented the poem’s immeas-
urable success. According to Ferry, ‘‘Because the
poem was requested so often, Bishop eventually
granted permission for it only to anthologists
who would agree to print three of her other
poems beside it; like other authors, she resisted
being identified by a single poem.’’CRITICISMLeah Tieger
Tieger is a freelance writer and editor. In the
following essay, she presents a near line-by-line
explication of ‘‘The Fish.’’The Fish