The Poem the Fish - Assignment Example

“The sun-cracked thwarts” (p. 714, line 70) are a product of the sun, thus natural. Beauty and ugliness, gain and loss, and victory and defeat; are some of the contrasting themes the poet intended to bring out. A reader does not feel a sense of sadness when reading the poem, because the contrasts indicate a victory of nature over human beings.
The phrase “rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!”(p. 714, line 74) is a realization of the triumph of the fish over another fisher, and nature over humankind. The imagery used changes our perspective of the fish from a helpless catch to a survivor. The poet’s attitude towards the fish also shifts. The fisher respects the survivor spirit of the fish and lets it go.

The poet uses roads to symbolize the choices that one makes in life. The two roads diverging into different directions symbolize choices. Each choice carries a different outcome. “I took the one less travelled” (p. 859, line 19) means that the poet made a difficult decision, in that most people would not have chosen it. “And that has made all the difference” (p. 859, line 20) shows that the poet was satisfied with the path he chose to take and that it has positively impacted his life. This interpretation makes the poem a call for people to make unique decisions and not always follow the herd.

The metaphors in this poem allude to pregnancy. The speaker is a pregnant woman describing the large and heavy sensation of being pregnant.
The speaker refers to herself as “a riddle in nine syllables (p. 735, line 1). Riddle is a metaphor for pregnancy, in that she is like a puzzle containing something deeper, that is, a baby. Nine syllables refer to the nine months of pregnancy after which the riddle is solved.

A poet assumes different personas depending on the subject of the poem. Poems carry different messages, thus the poet may assume different personalities, objects and even multiple personalities in one poem. All these depend on the underlying subject matter. The message of a poem does not have to be personal, although the poet may draw from his/her experience when composing. In “White Lies” Trethewey relies on her experiences as an interracial child passing for Caucasian in a racially charged environment.