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“(love song, with two goldfish)” by Grace Chua is a contemporary poem written in 2003. The poem is about a pair of goldfish living together in a fishbowl and experiencing a romantic relationship. The two goldfish represent a young couple (young teenagers) growing up in an environment which deprives them of their desires and does not fulfil them; their common feelings of isolation draw them toward each other, then apart as they mature and slowly realize that they do not truly care for each other but came together mainly because of circumstance.
The poem uses a lot of humorous puns which express that love can be ruined by some circumstances and a desire for a better life-experience. The title explains much about the poem; love will be a theme, as well as the significance of the two goldfish which will likely be a metaphor. The reader must also notice that almost the entire poem is surrounded in parentheses, including the title. The round shape of the parentheses resembles that of a fishbowl.
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Furthermore, the last line of the poem is “(bowl)” which is indicative of their purpose; the parentheses represent a fishbowl. A fishbowl is a barrier of sorts which does not allow the fish to explore outside its walls. In this way the goldfish are isolated from the rest of the world. This is a problem for the fish as they do not enjoy their sense of confinement. The male, described as a “drifter,” (line 1) courts the female and soon after they dream of exploring the ocean, a much vaster body of water.
Clearly they cannot stand living in such a small world, with no power over such a lonely existence. There is no particular rhyme scheme in this poem which leads the reader for focus more on the humour of this poem. The humour captures the audience's attention and emotions through the references to fish, which come in the form of puns. Not one of these puns is insignificant however; each has its own detail to add to the larger idea of the poem. The author also cleverly uses all of these jokes to allow the reader to notice the dichotomy of the references: each joke could be interpreted as both a pun because they are fish and a hint at their human characteristics. The first line of the poem “He's a drifter” is and example of dichotomy. By nature he ventures and explores and cannot stay in the same place for long. By contrast, he lives in a fishbowl, in a compact space, and so cannot do this. This leaves him with an existentialist outlook on life. The fish are clearly anthropomorphous as they think and act as humans would, such as sharing secrets and counting the waves. The goldfish are comparable to teenagers through the depiction of their intense and unstable relationship; young couples are prone to fighting more and are more passionate. The fishbowl is representative of the limitations on the teenagers placed by society, restricting their lives and causing them to conform to social norms. The story of the teenagers is a tragic tale of love sprung from despair; the two fish come together only because of circumstance. If they had not been the only ones stuck in the same bowl or had they not both felt the same feelings of isolation and loneliness they would not have associated with each other. At first their story seems happy and the fish appear perfectly innocent and also trying to pursue the young woman as he is “always floating around her” (lines 1-2). As the poem progresses they grow ever-closer and begin to understand each other. The male, who is more naive than the female, believes their love to be true and is more dedicated to their relationship. Because of this he imagines them sharing their deepest secrets in submarine silence. This powerful romantic emotion is common to teenagers, who have not yet learned what the limitations of life are. The female, who is quicker to mature emotionally, realizes first that their relationship is not based on feelings for each other and is quick to end it, knowing that they cannot escape their reality through each other. This is supported by the tone of the poem. In the beginning the tone is slow and the relationship between the fish is also slow. As they become closer in stanzas 2 to 3 the tone speeds up, just as does their relationship. When it draws to a close and the girl leaves the boy the tone returns to its original pace to show how their lives return to being similar to what they were before. The female and male both come to understand themselves and their world better from their experience, which is the only change from the beginning. The author cleverly leaves hints for the reader instead of directly communicating what transpires between the two fish. Subtlety is used in all references to human intelligence. For example the female “wanted (and he could not give) a life beyond the (bowl)” (lines 24-28) , which explains the girl's entire thought process in only a few lines. She has realized that life beyond the limitations of the bowl is not possible. She has accepted that she has no control over her fate. It is then that she leaves the boy; she can no longer interact with his naive thoughts and overly-optimistic hopes. Likewise, she understands that she cannot hope to meet his expectations and she cannot bear to let him down as it is shown in the last stanza. The reader notices that the separation is metaphorical as well as grammatical. “(the reason, she said/she wanted) / (and he could not give)” (lines 24-28) shows that “He” and “she” are no longer in the same incidental world. In conclusion, the goldfish are representations of young teenage humans. Their romance is communicated through cleverly worded jokes and through the structure of the stanzas. The use of parentheses around almost the entire poem is designed to outline the confinement and feelings of isolation, loneliness and depression. The goldfish grow together because of their young naivete and then apart when the girl's thoughts become more sober and she concludes that they must part ways.
In the poem, “(love song, with two goldfish)” by Grace Chua, the author describes the evolution of a young romance between two goldfish with its consequential rise and fall using imagery and metaphors. From the title we can automatically understand what the poem will be about and the parenthesis give an image of the shape of the fishbowl, creating a setting. The title is not capitalized because it is not just a statement, but is in fact part of a story that is constantly evolving and has many aspects.
Upon the first stanza, we immediately get the impression of unrequited love. In the first sentence, “he’s a drifter, always floating around her, he has nowhere else to go,” we meet the two characters, him and her, and we encounter a lot of water imagery with words such as “drifter” and “floating”. These words however give off the impression that he’s alone and would be lost without her to follow. As if she’s his everything. We get the impression though that his love for her is not returned when Chua says, “he wishes she would sing, not much, just the scales.”
The reader can understand from the word “wishes” that her singing is not something often received and because he doesn’t even want her to sing much, we can infer that his attention towards her is not reciprocated. However, I do not think that the fish is necessarily bitter about the circumstances because he uses humor when he says that he wishes she would “give him the fish eye” or “sing just the scales.” Because the characters are fish, the light-hearted metaphors offset the melancholy first sentence of unrequited love.
Transitioning to the second stanza, we again see this fishbowl imagery. Just as the first stanza was in parenthesis, so is the second one, but now the reader gets the impression that the fish are in separate fishbowls when Chua says, “Bounded by rounded walls she makes fish eyes and kissy lips at him.” The word “bounded” gives the impression that she is trapped and being kept away from him, but we also learn that the feelings felt by the male goldfish are now felt by her as well. We also get a fun, flirtatious feel from this stanza which hints at a budding relationship.
In response to him, she “makes fish eyes…kissy lips…darts behind pebbles.” I find the darting to be flirtatious because it hints at the caution she feels towards this new love, but as even pebbles are too small for a goldfish to hide behind, it shows her tentative openness towards the budding romance. Finally at the end of the stanza it says she “swallows his charms, hook, line and sinker.” The metaphor for the fishing line imagery again adds humor, but it also alerts the reader that she has completely fallen in love with him – an idea that progresses into the third stanza.
Throughout the third stanza, we come across a certain ambiguity about whether the two goldfish are actually separate from one another. No longer are the two fish only referred to as “he” and “she” but by the end they’ve become a “they”. Both fish are also referred to within the same parenthetical statement which hasn’t occurred before this point. Unfortunately, they remained trapped in the bowl, and words such as “could” and “would” are scattered throughout the entire stanza. Depicting images of what the two would do if they could escape. One of the activities he describes is, “he would take her to the ocean, they could count the waves.”
I think that this phrase describes his feelings towards the relationship very well. Because he’s with her and her company is all that matters to him, he doesn’t need to go out and have lavish experiences. He says that, “in the submarine silence, they would share their deepest secrets.” The consonance here with the “s” sound helps progress their seclusion from the rest of the the world along with the depth of their love with words such as “submarine” and “deepest”.
The stanza ends with a simile stating that they would “dive for pearls like stars”. I think that the simile could have a much deeper meaning than them just diving to the bottom of the ocean. While the phrase could be seen as their love growing stronger and deeper, I see it as almost the opposite because of the constant usage of the words would and could in the stanza. The use of the heavens in love poems often give off the impression that love is infinite, but here they can’t reach the heavens as they are trapped within the bowl. Their entrapment symbolizes the lack of growth in their relationship and how they have not been able to move past the initial flirtatiousness of new love.
By the fourth stanza we have reached the end of the relationship, and it becomes apparent that the fish could be metaphors for a human relationship. The goldfish could’ve been chosen to represent actual human beings because of the simplicity associated with a goldfish’s character and the similarly simplistic relationship. The stanza opens with her ending the relationship, and fish-related death imagery becomes common with phrases such as “belly-up”, “sinks like a fish” and “drowns”. While in previous stanzas, the fish imagery added a humorous note, here they add a much darker tone where the dead-fish imagery becomes metaphoric to the death of the relationship.
The reader can infer that the ex-lovers were in fact humans when Chua says, “He drinks like a stone. Drowns these sorrows, stares emptily through glass.” The word drown here might not be relating to the actual act of drowning, but to the act of getting drunk and possibly drowning his sorrows in liquor. As he “stares emptily through the glass,” the glass could symbolize both the fishbowl and the end of his drink, and the loneliness that would accompany both.
Finally in the last stanza, we learn as to why the couple broke up, and the use of parenthesis plays a major role in exhibiting their distance- as if they’re in two separate fishbowls once again. This stanza is the shortest, and it goes, “(the reason, she said/ she wanted)/(and he could not give)/ a life/beyond the/ (bowl).” Here we see the two separate sides, and how she left him because she felt trapped within the relationship.
This theme of entrapment is noticeable throughout the entire poem with the fishbowl imagery, along her desire to escape with the words “would” and “could”. When lines 26-27 don’t use the parenthesis, it shows her dream of exploration and moving past the known realms of the fishbowl. The break-up was her escape from the binding fishbowl, and her ensuing freedom from the confining relationship.
Throughout the poem, Chua described the evolution of a relationship from the bubbly excitement and tentativeness of new love, to its downfall from confinement and resulting break-up with emotions ranging from sorrow to freedom. Real human emotions are expressed through those of goldfish to express the simplicity of their relationship and to create a metaphor through the entrapment they must feel within the bowl.
Love song, With Two Goldfish. (2020, Jun 02). Retrieved from https://studymoose.com/love-song-two-goldfish-essay
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