"The Fish" by Elizabeth Bishop

In my journal entry about Elizabeth Bishop's "The Fish," I wrote about Bishop's explicit descriptions of the fish caught on the speaker's hook. Many commentaries believed the fish to be a metaphor--that Bishop personified the fish with human emotions and such. I think otherwise. In the poem, the speaker marvels over the fish and its antiquated wonders, and tastes what its like to be a fish in this fish's situation in particular; old, battered, worn from battle and struggle, and hope-forsaken. It is man's nature to believe these emotions were borrowed from those of a human. I think the beauty in Bishop's poem is that all the descriptions of the fish were actually those of a fish-- Bishop is begging us to see the true nature around us for what it is and even deeper, because there is so much that we can learn about ourselves if we can take the time to study the life around us. 

I'm sitting here now, wondering how I can assign myself a project to experience just what the speaker in the poem tells us all of, and record it. Perhaps in poetry form. I want to understand the history of something by studying my perception of its inner feelings and outer design, like the speaker found in the fish. I'm going to let it catch my eye one day, completely by surprise, instead of looking for it myself. I'll post it when I find what I'm looking for...