Previous Next

“The Fish” has a tone best characterized as conversational yet wonderstruck. Though always precise, the speaker’s language is rarely excessively poetic. Despite using sonic devices like assonance, consonance, and slant rhyme, much of the speaker’s language has a spontaneous quality. Take, for example, their initial description of the fish’s skin in lines 9–13:

                             Here and there
     his brown skin hung in strips
     like ancient wallpaper,
     and its pattern of darker brown
     was like wallpaper.

The speaker likens the fish’s skin to wallpaper twice in this short passage. Such doubling may initially sound odd, but it shows how the speaker is thinking in real time. It’s as if they make an initial comparison and feel unsure about it, but then decide the comparison is justified and say it again. Furthermore, note how many of the short lines in this passage are enjambed (en-JAMMED), meaning they don’t stop at the end but continue right on to the next line. This use of enjambment adds to the conversational tone by allowing the language to flow freely. In addition to being conversational, the poem’s tone is also wonderstruck. This aspect shines through in the vibrant clarity of the speaker’s imagery. It also returns at the poem’s end, when the speaker describes with ecstasy how “victory filled up / the little rented boat . . . until everything / was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!” (lines 66–67, 74–75).

Previous section Symbols Next section Structure

Take a Study Break