A model of Bishop's tendency toward singular or isolated figures, "The Man-Moth" (1946) opens on an incisive description that was her trademark. The image of a man standing in moonlight depicts him as "an inverted pin, the point magnetized to the moon." With a deft twist, she envisions him like toothpaste in a tube "forced through . . . in black scrolls on the light." Unlike the man himself, the "man-moth" shadow attempts the unthinkable by climbing buildings and trailing along behind his source "like a photographer's cloth." The fourth and fifth stanzas imperil the shadow during a subway ride, where he "always seats himself facing the wrong way" and cowers from the dangers of the third rail. The poet merges the play of light on dark with fantasy in the sixth stanza, in which the shadow, like a mime, acquires humanity by squeezing out a tear, the pure substance of "underground springs."
Critics have characterized Bishop's detachment as the result of emotional inertia, the atmosphere of "The Fish" (1955). The vignette inventories physical parts, which she catalogs without dissection. The fish, sapped of fight, becomes an elder statesman who bears the marks of past challenges. The poet-speaker delights in his "medals with their ribbons/frayed and wavering"; then, in line 75, experiences an unforeseen surprise of "rainbow, rainbow, rainbow." Her victory over the fish gives place to admiration. In sympathy with the water world below, she exults, "I let the fish go."
