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Image in "The Fish"
This poem depends on its imagery more than any other single element. The speaker alternately convinces us of the fish’s ugliness and its beauty, and in order to achieve this difficult task, she must render the scene in perfect visual detail. We are left with the impression that the fish is powerful, beautiful, terrible, alive, ancient, and formidable. In order for the fish to be all of those things, the images surrounding it must be carefully controlled.
- lines 16/17 - "He was speckled with barnacles, fine rosettes of lime"
Here we see how the speaker struggles to get the image right, but also to focus on its potential for beauty. “Speckled with barnacles” is an accurate description, but the addition of the phrase “fine rosettes of lime” as a corrective allows us to focus on the tiniest of details in order to appreciate the beauty that we might not have otherwise seen. “Speckled” is a gentle term that implies a kind of natural artistry, and the “fine rosettes” bring us closer to the barnacles and allow us to see them as beautiful objects rather than ugly fixtures.
- lines 43/44 - "It was more like the tipping / of an object toward the light"
The speaker’s primary goal in describing the fish is accuracy; when she describes how the fish’s eyes shift, she makes sure that we understand that it was not to return her stare. These lines form a near simile because a thing is described as “more like” something than like something else. The speaker encourages us to imagine “the tipping / of an object toward the light” without telling us what that object might be. We must imagine it, which is what an effective image encourages us to do.
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