18 pages • 36 minutes read
Grace Chua(Love Song, With Two Goldfish)
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2003A 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
Anthropomorphism
Anthropomorphism is the attribution of human characteristics, manners, and values to a non-human animal or object (“Anthropomorphism.” Oxford Language, Google / Oxford University Press). Chua anthropomorphizes the goldfish by giving them the human experience of limerence as well as the ability to engage in the practice of courtship behaviors that lead to a complex range of emotions.
The poem begins with a characterization of the male goldfish as bored and passive, yet not without charm. The characterization of the female goldfish reveals a flirtatious and playful individual, who, the reader may infer, has high hopes for her future with the male goldfish, until she doesn’t. These descriptions capture the goldfish characters in the poem, yet they are very human terms by which to describe them, human terms that depict a common interaction between two heterosexual human beings of the opposite sex.
In the last stanza, the act of talking further anthropomorphizes the goldfish. The female goldfish tells her lover that she wants “a life / beyond the / (bowl)” (Lines 26-28). He cannot give her what she wants, and her remarks suggest that the goldfish then engage in a break-up conversation or fight.
Pun
Levity and humor, through the poet’s use of puns and wordplay, enhance the pathos of “(love song, with two goldfish).” Puns work best when a word’s different meanings can be appreciated in a single use of the word that enables the meanings to play out in multiple ways. For example, when the speaker of the poem states that the male goldfish longs to hear the female goldfish sing “the scales” (Line 4), the speaker refers to both musical scales as well as the protective scales that make up the outer covering of a fish.
Puns also employ similar-sounding words that have different respective meanings or connotations. The layered suggestions of a pun can juxtapose the definitions of a word with particular elements of the writing and invite the listener or reader of the pun to enjoy the wordplay. For example, the speaker explains that the male goldfish feels “bowled over” (Line 12) by the female goldfish’s reciprocated love, and the word “bowl” possesses multiple meanings that are relevant to the reader’s understanding of the poem. A bowl is a rounded container, like the one in which the goldfish live, and the poet’s reference to the fish bowl plays with the idiom, “to bowl over,” which means to be overwhelmingly surprised or astonished by an external force (Ammer, Christine. “Bowl Over.” The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2002. Dictionary.com).
Idioms
Chua’s puns and wordplay rely heavily on the reader’s familiarity with American-English idiomatic expressions. Idioms contribute to the notion of dialect, which is a regional way of speaking. The meanings of idioms come from the words within the expression that unite to create a metaphor. An idiom typically arises from a particular common knowledge within a select group, often reflecting the groups’ beliefs, values, and cultural touchstones.
For example, Chua uses the phrase “belly-up” (Line 18) to articulate the female goldfish’s waning romantic interest. “To go belly-up” idiomatically describes a failing business or venture ("go belly up." Farlex Dictionary of Idioms. 2015. Farlex, Inc). The phrase conflates failure with death. The double meaning of the idiom draws attention to both the failure of the goldfishes’ romantic venture and the fact that fish float upside down when they die.
Other examples of idioms present in the poem include the expressions “sink like a stone” and “drinks like a fish.” Chua flips these common phrase into a description of the male goldfish’s heartache: “His heart sinks / like a fish. He drinks / like a stone” (Lines 19-21). On one level, the rearrangement of the idiom adds humor to the lines of the poem as the image of a fish drinking the water it inhabits comes across as redundant and obvious; flipping the two idioms around indicate the poet’s high awareness of the importance of word choice in a work of poetry. As well, Chua employs enjambment after the verbs and before the figurative comparison. The pause enables readers to recall the idioms “drink like a fish” and “sink like a stone.” The readers’ minds then mirror the male goldfish’s tendency to “drift” around the bowl, as he does in Line 1 of the poem. These word choices enable the reader to empathize with the male goldfish’s realization that his environment shapes his actions and his desires.
The switching around of the words “stone” and “fish” also give the idioms a sad connotation. Like the female goldfish’s love gone “belly-up” (Line 18), the male goldfish’s drinking “like a stone” (Line 21) shows that his sense of agency and has gone awry. Fish swim, appearing to hover throughout the container in which they live; however, the failure of the relationship means that the male goldfish is unable even to float in water.
