16 pages • 32 minutes read
Howard NemerovThe Goose Fish
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1977A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Literary Devices
Form and Meter
The poem comprises five nine-line stanzas. The meter is iambic tetrameter, except for the last line of each stanza, which is shorter, making an iambic trimeter. An iamb is a poetic foot consisting of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable, and a tetrameter consists of four poetic feet. A trimeter consists of three feet.
The lines “But still conspiring hand in hand” (Line 14) and “Along the still and tilted track” (Line 44) are good examples of regular iambic tetrameter lines. Examples of iambic trimeter are “His hugely grinning head” (Line 18) and “To make a world their own” (Line 27).
For variety of emphasis and effect, Nemerov makes many substitutions to the basic iambic patten. In Line 1, the second foot, “long shore,” is a spondee, a type of foot that consists of two stressed syllables. In Line 3, the first foot, “Two lovers” is a spondee, as is “swift tide” in Line 6, and the second foot in Line 11, “Hard moon’s.”
In iambic verse, the substitution of a trochee for an iamb in the first foot is very common. A trochee is the opposite of an iamb, consisting of a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed one. This device occurs in Line 22, with “Wondering” and in Line 38, “Dreadfully.”
Rhyme
Each stanza rhymes in the same way. Line 1 rhymes with Lines 2 and 4, Line 3 rhymes with Line 5, Line 6 rhymes with Line 7, and Line 8 rhymes with Line 9. This rhyme scheme can be represented as AABABCCDD. For the most part, Nemerov employs what are known as perfect or full rhymes, with the final stressed vowel in the line rhyming with the final consonant (as in “blood” and “flood” in Lines 6 and 7). In stanza 1, however, the three end rhymes for Lines 1, 2, and 4 are all imperfect or near rhymes: “moon,” “alone,” and “one.” They all feature the consonant “n” as the final sound, and the vowel “o” is the same in each case, but it is also pronounced differently in each case. The same occurs in Lines 15-16, where the final syllable of “underfoot” is rhymed with “out” in the following line. Stanza 4 also contains similar imperfect rhyme, with “grin,” “obscene,” and “comedian” (Lines 28, 29, 31, respectively). As with the earlier example, the consonant “n” occurs at the end of all the words, but the vowel sound is different in each case.
There is one example of internal rhyme, where two words in the same line rhyme. This is “throat” and “choke” (Line 39).
Alliteration and Assonance
Alliteration is the repetition of initial consonant sounds in nearby words. Examples include “hugely grinning head” (Line 18), “sand seemed” (Line 39), and “tilted track” (Line 45). Assonance is the repetition of nearby vowel sounds, as in the “o” sound in “long shore” (Line 1); the long vowels lend emphasis to the meaning. In Line 19, “china light” is another example of assonance, as is “still and tilted” in Line 44.
