At the Fishhouses by Elizabeth Bishop
"At the Fishhouses" is a poem by Elizabeth Bishop that intricately explores the relationship between humanity and nature, particularly through the lens of personal and collective knowledge. The poem begins with vivid descriptions of an old fisherman mending his nets, gradually drawing the reader into the sensory details of the setting, including the shimmering surface of the sea and the iridescent scales of fish. As the narrator introduces their connection to the fisherman, the poem shifts from concrete imagery to more abstract reflections on knowledge and experience.
The central theme revolves around the sea as a metaphor for knowledge itself—both alluring and ultimately unattainable. Bishop compares the qualities of water, such as its movement and clarity, to the nature of knowledge, suggesting that while knowledge is omnipresent and essential for survival, it remains elusive and difficult to grasp fully. The poem concludes with the idea that knowledge, much like the cold, deep sea, is something one can observe and encounter indirectly but cannot fully immerse oneself in. Through this juxtaposition, Bishop raises profound questions about the human experience of seeking understanding amidst the complexities of life and nature.
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At the Fishhouses by Elizabeth Bishop
Excerpted from an article in Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition
First published: 1955 (collected in The Complete Poems, 1927-1979, 1983)
Type of work: Poem
The Work
Although “At the Fishhouses” consists largely of description, it also seems to offer a formulation of the relation between humans and nature, or humans and truth, which approaches that achieved by some of the poems of Robert Frost, in which daily occurrences are made to yield deeper meanings through a juxtaposition with larger themes. In this poem, furthermore, the precise descriptions that in many of Bishop’s works are simply a fact of style come to take on the quality of content, being put in context by the sudden shift to abstraction of the work’s final six lines.
The self-effacing narrator begins by description, sketching the old man who sits mending his nets, until nearly halfway through, where he or she appears for the first time in a possessive pronoun: The reader is told that this man “was a friend of my grandfather” (the word “I” is not used until even further down). The reader is given the silver surface of the sea, the benches, the lobster pots; even the tubs are lined with iridescent scales on which walk iridescent flies. Suddenly the man becomes real: He accepts a cigarette, a Lucky Strike. A line break introduces the reader to the theme of the water, that element from which come all these silvery riches and that forms the source of this man’s life and livelihood. This separate section of six lines is tied to the first through the theme of color: In the water lie silver tree trunks.
The next section starts again with the water, an “element bearable to no mortal.” The narrator waxes whimsical with memories of singing hymns to a seal, then returns to the water. This is the same sea that the narrator has seen all over the world, yet here it is so cold that no one would even want to put in a hand, for it would make one’s bones ache; if one tasted it, the water would burn the tongue. This, the narrator reflects finally, “is like what we imagine knowledge to be.” The narrator then enumerates the qualities ascribed to knowledge that, in fact, are possessed by this water:
dark, salt, clear, moving, utterly free,
Knowledge, one imagines, is all around, but at the same time it is an element in which one cannot live or even dip one’s limbs. Knowledge, furthermore, is inherently historical: a great stream of time that surrounds humankind, relative to an individual’s own precise situation.
The suggestion seems to be that knowledge, paralleled to this translucent and inviting—but, in fact, inhospitable—element, is ultimately unreachable. The best one can do is live on the land, scraping the scales from fish that have been taken from this medium. One may imagine knowledge to flow all around, and in fact it is the font of those things necessary for human sustenance. Yet at the same time one can never attain it; indeed, it is a medium too fine for such corporeal creatures as humans to experience directly.
Bibliography
Bloom, Harold, ed. Elizabeth Bishop: Modern Critical Views. New York: Chelsea House, 1985.
Boland, Eavan. “An Unromantic American.” Parnassus: Poetry in Review 14 (Summer, 1988): 73-92.
Fountain, Gary. Remembering Elizabeth Bishop: An Oral Biography. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1994.
Kirsch, Adam. The Wounded Surgeon: Confession and Transformation in Six American Poets: Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Bishop, John Berryman, Randall Jarrell, Delmore Schwartz and Sylvia Plath. New York: W. W. Norton, 2005.
MacMahon, Candace, ed. Elizabeth Bishop: A Bibliography, 1927-1979. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1980.
Millier, Brett C. Elizabeth Bishop: Life and Memory. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.
Motion, Andrew. Elizabeth Bishop. Wolfeboro, N.H.: Longwood, 1986.
Parker, Robert Dale. The Unbeliever: The Poetry of Elizabeth Bishop. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988.
Schwartz, Lloyd. That Sense of Constant Readjustment: Elizabeth Bishop “North & South.” New York: Garland, 1987.
Schwartz, Lloyd, and Sybil P. Estess, eds. Elizabeth Bishop and Her Art. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1983.
Travisano, Thomas J. Elizabeth Bishop: Her Artistic Development. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1988.
Wylie, Diana E. Elizabeth Bishop and Howard Nemerov: A Reference Guide. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1983.