The Fish Essay

This Study Guide consists of approximately 39 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of The Fish.

The Fish Essay

This Study Guide consists of approximately 39 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of The Fish.
This section contains 508 words
(approx. 2 pages at 400 words per page)
Buy The Fish Study Guide

In the following essay excerpt, Martin comments on contradiction and false images in "The Fish."

In "The Fish," for instance, Moore employs a typically intricate stanzaic pattern along with evocative, sensual language to create a scene as unfathomable as it initially seems specific. The first three sentences are clear enough. The fish "wade through [the] black jade" of a sea where "submerged shafts of the / sun . . . move themselves with spotlight swiftness." Nevertheless, even within those sentences, Moore has hinted at the broken vision to follow. She describes the movement of one of the "crow-blue mussel-shells" with curious indirection. The movement of the sand helps a viewer to infer rather than to observe directly the broken movement of the shells. We know only that "one keeps / adjusting the ash heaps, / opening and shutting itself like / an / injured fan." The rest of the poem develops this hint of submerged...

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This section contains 508 words
(approx. 2 pages at 400 words per page)
Buy The Fish Study Guide
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