The Poetry of Fishing

PopMatters looks at the solitary craft of fishing and poetry and how they've meshed through the years.

From the story...

The list is prodigious as an Alaskan salmon run: Izaak Walton, James Fenimore Cooper, Rudyard Kipling, Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway, Norman MacLean, Thomas McGuane, Nick Lyons, and John McPhee. They’re just a few of the many writers, classic and contemporary, whose prose routinely tangles with the sport of fishing. However, prose writers like these are not alone: for centuries, poets such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Butler Yeats, Elizabeth Bishop, and James A. Emanuel have mused over the fisherman’s art.

Why do so many writers, particularly poets, embrace the sport of fishing? For starters, fishing and writing are typically solitary crafts that offer fishermen and poets sweet opportunities for introspection. Sure, you can fish with friends, just as you can participate in writers’ workshops and revel in the camaraderie each experience provides, but fishing and poetry dangle seductive invitations for the loner hungry to tackle his or her ideas. Unlike more collaborative art forms, such as theater, music, or filmmaking, fishing and poetry cultivate individual responsibility like few other crafts: whether you write a good poem or catch many fish, the poet’s and fisherman’s products are always a reflection of his abilities alone.