The Goose Fish

“The Goose Fish” is a lyric poem by American poet Howard Nemerov. It was published in Nemerov’s third collection, The Salt Garden, in 1955. The poem is about two lovers on a shore at night who feel guilty about their love. Their discovery on the shore of a hideous dead goose fish serves as a symbol of both their guilt and their absolution. The poem has a wry humor that is typical of Nemerov’s work, as is the rather pessimistic view of life presented, in which love is undermined by some unknown element.

Poet Biography

Howard Nemerov was born on March 1, 1920, in New York City. He was the eldest of three children born to David Nemerov and Gertrude Russek. The family was of Russian Jewish ethnicity. Nemerov’s parents were well-off, and he attended the Society for Ethical Culture’s Fieldston School, graduating in 1937. He then attended Harvard University, graduating with a bachelor’s degree in 1941. During World War II, Nemerov was a pilot with the Royal Canadian Air Force and later the U.S. Army Air Forces, where he attained the rank of first lieutenant. In 1944, Nemerov married Margaret Russell, and they would have three children.

After the war, Nemerov taught literature at Hamilton College, New York state, and then at Bennington College, Vermont, from 1948 to 1966. He also taught at Brandeis University from 1966 to 1969, and Washington University in St. Louis, where he was Edward Mallinkrodt Distinguished University Professor of English and Distinguished Poet in Residence from 1969 until 1990

Nemerov’s first volume of poetry was The Image and the Law (1947), which was followed by Guide to the Ruins (1950), and The Salt Garden (1955). “The Goose Fish” appeared in the latter collection. Nemerov also wrote novels during this period: The Melodramatists (1949), Federigo: Or, The Power of Love (1954), and The Homecoming Game (1957). His later volumes of poetry included The Blue Swallows (1967), A Sequence of Seven with a Drawing by Ron Slaughter, (1967), The Winter Lightning: Selected Poems (1968), Gnomes and Occasions (1973), and The Western Approaches: Poems, 1973–75 (1975). The Collected Poems of Howard Nemerov (1977) won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the Bollingen Prize. This was followed by Sentences (1980); Inside the Onion (1984), and War Stories: Poems about Long Ago and Now (1987). Trying Conclusions: New and Selected Poems, 1961-1991, was published posthumously, in 1992.

Nemerov received many awards and honors, including fellowships from the Academy of American Poets and The Guggenheim Foundation, and the National Medal of the Arts. He was poetry consultant to the Library of Congress in 1963 and 1964, a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets beginning in 1976, and poet laureate of the United States from 1988 to 1990.

Nemerov died of cancer on July 5, 1991, in University City, Missouri.

Poem Text

Nemerov, Howard. “The Goose Fish.” 1955. Poetry Foundation.

Summary

Two lovers are alone at night on the shore. The moon is shining. They make love and for a while they feel like they are in paradise. In stanza 2, they come back to earth and feel self-conscious and embarrassed as they stand on the sand, holding hands. Then they see at their feet a dead goose fish with a grin on his face. In stanza 3, the two lovers hesitate as they contemplate the smile of the fish, wondering how to interpret it. The feel it must have some meaning for them. Stanza 4 describes the fish’s grin in more detail and at first the couple do not know what to make of it. They eventually decide that the expression on the face of the fish is a comment on their relationship. They acknowledge the guilt of their love and think of the fish as having observed their love making. In the fifth and final stanza, because of what, imaginatively speaking, the goose fish has seen, or what he symbolically represents, he becomes the lovers’ “patriarch” (Line 37), suggesting that he has a kind of knowledge and authority due to his ancientness. The fish is then described further; his throat is full of sand and there are gaps in his teeth. Time passes, but the fish does not explain the joke that has so amused him. The moon goes down on its appointed course.