At the Fishhouses

I like this poem because it wonderfully describes the life of a fisherman, which includes the monotony and the strenuous work as well as the beautiful side that can be seen when you look closer. Things that would seem disgusting to many people passing by is a source of beauty for the fisherman who work with these very things all day, every day for years on end. “The big fish tubs are completely lined with layers of beautiful herring scales and the wheelbarrows are similarly plastered with creamy iridescent coats of mail, with small iridescent flies crawling on them.”

The unrhymed set up and long stanzas fit perfectly with the overall message and subject matter of the poem. According to the poem, knowledge is “utterly free…[and] forever flowing” so summing the message of the poem up into neat stanzas would contradict what Bishop is trying to say. Also, it would not see right to use perfectly rhymed, short stanzas to describe the tough and tiring work of the fishermen being talked about; the narrative-like set up fits much better with the overall tone of the poem.

Although there is no rhyme scheme, there is a repetition of words that further emphasizes the monotony of their jobs. The words “up” and “down” are repeated several times throughout the poem to show that every morning they must bring down the boats and every night they have to bring them back up only to be repeated the next day. Instead of saying outright “each day they have to do the same thing over and over again” she interweaves it into the narrative because the repetition has become such a part of their lives they don’t even notice it’s there anymore.