Trout
Trout - form Summary
Military Imagery Drives Motion
Heaney turns a trout into a figure of weapon-like force, tracking its movement through the river with sustained military language. The poem presents the fish as hidden in deep water, then suddenly flashing into the shallows and back again. This extended metaphor makes the trout seem both elusive and powerful, and it gives the river scene a tense, energetic feeling.
Read Complete AnalysesHangs, a fat gun-barrel, deep under arched bridges or slips like butter down the throat of the river. From depths smooth-skinned as plums his muzzle gets bull's eye; picks off grass-seed and moths that vanish, torpedoed. Where water unravels over gravel-beds he is fired from the shallows white belly reporting flat; darts like a tracer- bullet back between stones and is never burnt out. A volley of cold blood ramrodding the current.
Published: 1966
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