Reviewers of Elizabeth Bishop’s work have small trouble in demonstrating its perfection: she is an easy poet to quote from, and it rarely occurs to them that this very fact might indicate limitations to that perfection. The cisatlantic notices for The Complete Poems almost all singled out as exemplary her eyeball-to-eyeball encounter with a big fish.

I looked into his eyes
which were far larger than mine
but shallower, and yellowed,
the irises backed and packed
with tarnished tinfoil
seen through the lenses
of old scratched isinglass.