At the Fishhouses (Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Elizabeth Bishop
- First Published: 1955
- Type of Work: Poem
- Genres: Poetry
- Subjects: Nature, Human race, Sea or seafaring life, Fishing or fishermen
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...
[The entire page is 772 words long]
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