Summary
The speaker catches a huge fish and hauls it up so that she can examine it from her boat. The fishing hook is caught in the fish's mouth, and the fish itself doesn't move or fight back, though it's very heavy. It's beaten-up looking and formidable, and also a bit ugly. Its brown skin is loose in spots, like old wallpaper hanging from the wall, and is unevenly patterned with dark spots, as if the old, faded, stained wallpaper had a pattern of roses on it. He's also patterned with all kinds of marine life, from barnacles to sea-lice, with a bit of seaweed hanging from his body.
Analysis
While this poem consists largely of long, winding sentences, which reflect the stream-of-consciousness shifts in thought that the speaker is undergoing, the first line is brief and straightforward. Though not a sentence of its own, it is a simple independent clause, with subject-verb-object word order, that can stand alone. This helps us get a sense of the speaker's condition before her encounter with the fish, which in turn helps us understand how the encounter itself is unexpected and affecting. This first line, "I caught a tremendous fish," is simple and comprehensible, letting us know that the speaker expects nothing more than an ordinary fishing trip. The poem starts with the word "I," giving us a clue that the speaker is primarily concerned with herself and with her own experiences. The diction of this first line is mostly very basic, again reinforcing the ordinariness of the occasion, with the exception of the word "tremendous." This word hints that something unusual is about to take place, but it primarily suggests that the speaker has been successful in catching the fish: we are primed to see it as a kind of prize.
Promptly, though, the poem turns from examining the fish as a prize, or as a mere prop in the speaker's fishing trip, and begins to discuss it in great detail and in its own right. This discussion primarily focuses on the ways in which the fish is alien to the speaker, but in minute ways, with a trademark subtlety, Elizabeth Bishop suggests that the speaker is beginning to identify with the fish. For instance, the poem describes the strangeness of the fish—its size, its ugliness, and, most bizarrely of all, the way that it is laden with parasites and the residue of its underwater life. Nevertheless, Bishop uses a simile to compare it to wallpaper, drawing a connection to the familiar human realm of the home. Moreover, she uses a synonym for ugly, "homely," which connotes a certain plainness rather than a surprising ugliness (and which even contains the word "home"). Overall, in this first segment of the poem, the speaker appears struck by the fish's blend of familiarity and strangeness, as well as its mix of strength and weakness: it is described as "venerable" and as heavy, yet does not fight back even when its life is at risk.
