Beauty is a thing that cannot be measured by one single unit, it takes time to measure the beauty in things. In the poem, “The Fish” by Elizabeth Bishop, the poet talks about an experience that they had with a fish in a small pond, and how the fish help her understand beauty. Throughout the poem, the poet describes what they felt during their experience with this fish, and the beauty that they got out of it. Therefore, in this poem, the poet is suggesting that beauty can be found in many things. However, the poem also suggests that it takes time to actually see beauty and understand what beauty is. But when you see beauty, there is no easy way to interpret beauty. The beauty of something rather has to be kept safe, or let go.
To start, the poet uses sensory words to describe
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That beauty is interpreted into the “victory that filled up the boat”. That victory that the poet felt was from seeing the rainbow in the water. Before she understood what, the rainbow meant, she started to realize the beauty in not just the fish, but in the boat and the water itself. The poet wrote, “where the oil had spread a rainbow around the rusted engine, to the bailer rusted orange…”, they were trying to explain that the rainbow opened her eyes to see how there is beauty in a small rusted boat, and that there is a feeling of victory that the poet felt when they were fishing, like they were on top of the world. Therefore, when the poet felt that victory, they knew that they couldn’t feel anything like that again, but they realized that if they took that fish, they would be ruining that victory and beauty for someone else, so they let the fish go. To support this, the poet wrote “until everything was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow! And I let the fish go.” Victory is something that everyone wants, and because the poet experienced that beauty in fishing, that’s what defines beauty the