In Elizabeth Bishop's "The Fish," a meditative lyric, when
the speaker of the poem sees that everything "is rainbow, rainbow," she begins to notice
the beauty of other things around her. This identification of beauty is what leads to
her releasing of the fish. Elizabeth Bishop's poetry is pictorial, reflecting on the
self-referential aspect of art. Her use of the rainbow and the other images illustrate
this aspect.
Beauty can come from destruction: the "old
rusted engine, the bailer rusted orange, the sun-cracked thwarts" convey color and
imitate the rainbow, which is the victory of both the fish and its capturer. Thus,
the speaker reads the world around her. And, by doing so, she releases the fish, and
lets go of the past.
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