The Shampoo

“The Fish” by Elizabeth Bishop (1946)

“The Fish” is one of Bishop’s most famous poems, appearing in many authoritative anthologies. As with “The Shampoo,” “The Fish” creates an exacting image of the animal in the title. The speaker says the fish’s “brown skin hung in strips / like ancient wallpaper.” The poem tackles themes of nature and violence, and it includes an obscure narrator that hardly discloses anything about who they are. “The Fish” expands upon the theme of relationships that is also present in “The Shampoo.” With the latter, the relationship centers on the two people and nature. In the former, the primary relationship involves the speaker and the fish they catch.

“In the Waiting Room” by Elizabeth Bishop (1971)

The “I” that’s obscured, minimized, and transcended in “The Shampoo” finds itself in the spotlight in “In the Waiting Room.” In this poem, the subtle, confessional qualities of “The Shampoo” become overt as Bishop explicitly documents a personal moment from childhood in the waiting room at the dentist’s office. As her aunt receives treatment, the speaker, Bishop, looks over an issue of National Geographic and hears her aunt scream. The aunt’s yell and the pictures in the magazine push the speaker to grapple with the identity subsumed by their close friend and nature in “The Shampoo.