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The Fish | Introduction

Marianne Moore wrote “The Fish” in 1918 but it was published later in her first collection, Poems, in 1921. This collection was published, without her knowledge, in England by two of Moore’s friends. An example of rhymed syllabic verse, “The Fish” highlights Moore’s ability for precise visual description. Ironically, the poem is not about fish at all, but rather the relationship among a seaside cliff, sea life, and the sea itself. Sunlight acts upon the sea and its creatures, and the sea acts upon a cliff. Moore highlights the interdependence of these elements in the shape of the poem, which moves like a wave, surging towards a subject, then retreating from it. The narrator of the poem describes this interdependence in a hard, emotionally detached manner. Her images paradoxically suggest both fecundity and abundance and starkness and death. This dichotomy drives the poem, but Moore never resolves the paradox; rather, she suggests that it is a necessary part of the world. The processes of life and death are evident everywhere, and as much a part of the human as the natural landscape.

Moore was inspired by the natural world. She frequently wrote about animals, domestic and exotic, often preferring the non-human world over the human world. Moore was also interested in modern painting and studied color theory, which some critics mention as influencing “The Fish.” Other possible influences were her brother Warner’s passion for sailing and Moore’s deep respect for him. When the poem was republished in her second collection, Observations (1924), Moore used six-line stanzas instead of five. However, it is the five-line version that has been widely anthologized and written about.

The Fish Summary

First Stanza
The first line of “The Fish” syntactically belongs to the title. In an almost filmic manner, the speaker focuses on fish “wading” through “black jade.” These words are telling because they suggest a heaviness and a slowness to the fish’s movement. Jade is opaque and is not naturally associated with water. The darkness of the water underlines the mysteriousness of the sea, the difficulty of knowing it. By calling the sand disturbed by the opening and closing of one of the mussels “ash heaps,” Moore underscores not only the physical appearance of this action but also how the sea floor looks “disposable” to human eyes. By singling out one of the shells, noting how it is “adjusting” the environment around it, Moore suggests how the movement of the smallest thing can have an effect on the larger world.

Second Stanza
The second stanza picks up from the last line of the preceding stanza. By running her lines over, a technique known as enjambment, Moore foregrounds her own composing strategy, which highlights the interdependence of words and lines. Formally, then, the poem parallels its subject: the interdependence of the living and the dead, the individual thing and the context in which it exists. Her composing strategy, then, is also a composting strategy. She finishes the simile she began in the first stanza by likening the opening and closing of the mussel to an “injured fan.” The sea now begins to resemble nothing so much as a hospital ward for sick sea life.

In this stanza, Moore focuses on the sea, pointing out the vulnerability of barnacles. By writing that... » Complete The Fish Summary