Hello and welcome to The Daily Poem here in the Close Rees Podcast Network. I'm David Kern.

Today's poem is, I apologize, coming to you a little bit late, but better late than never, I suppose.

And this is a poem by Elizabeth Bishop, and it's called The Fish.

Now, this is a poem that's actually new to me. I only

recently discovered it, and I don't know it well, but it was striking, and I wanted to share

it with you. I don't really have anything eloquent to say about it, and it's a little bit

long, so I probably won't say much at all, if anything, but I did want to share it with you.

Elizabeth Bishop was born in 1911, she died in 1979. She was a poet and short storywriter. She was consultant in poetry to the

Library of Congress from 1949 to 1950, and the Pulitzer Prize winner for poetry in 1956.

She won the National Book Award in 1970, and a number of other awards. So she is certainly

considered one of the greatest

poets of the 20th century. The collection that won the Pulitzer Prize in 56 was a 1955

collection called Poems, North and South, A Cold Spring. If you're interested in finding that.

So again, this is the fish by Elizabeth Bishop.

I caught a tremendous fish and held him beside the boat half out of water,

with my hook fast in a corner of his mouth.

He didn't fight.

He hadn't fought at all.

He hung a grunting weight, battered and venerable and homely.

Here and there his brown skin hung in strips like ancient wallpaper,

and its pattern of darker brown was like wallpaper,

shapes like full-blown roses, stained and lost through age.

...