"At the Fishhouse" was first published in The New Yorker 1947 and collected in The Cold Spring , Elizabeth Bishop's second poem collection published in 1955. It is written around 1946 when Bishop visited again Nova Scotia where she spent part of her childhood with her maternal grandparents and suffered from her mother's death. The cold and silver view of the rocky seashore is considered as the scenery of Nova Scotia. As David Kalstone categorizes in Becoming A Poet: Elizabeth Bishop with Marianne Moore and Robert Lowell , "At the Fishhouse" describes the "disturbed, patient, expectant scrutiny of abandoned Northern scenes—that Bishop was writing in the late 1940s." It presents "the scale of her Nova Scotia village" (Kalstone 120). According to Brett C. Millier, Bishop saw the cold sea in "heavy" "gray" color at "Lockport Beach on the Atlantic Ocean" (Miller 181). Millier quotes Bishop's descriptions in Elizabeth Bishop: Life and the Memory of It : "Description of the dark, icy clear water – clear dark glass—slightly bitter (hard to define)" (qtd. in Millier 181). The seashore with fishhouses, therefore, is not only a landscape in Nova Scotia, but also a crossover where she reencounters with the familiar landscapes and her memory of mother.

"At the Fishhouse" is closely associated with Bishop's memory of Nova Scotia. In addition to the similarity of landscapes, the first-person narration and the speaker's relation to the "old man" remind readers the possible connection between this poem and Bishop's visit to Nova Scotia. In her letter to U.T. and Joseph Summers, Bishop confirmed that this poem relates to her experiences and even her memory. She mentioned, "a few lines of ‘At the Fishhouse' came to me in a dream, and the scene—which was real enough, I'd recently been there—but the old man and the conversation, etc., were all in a later dream" (qtd. in Giroux 308). Either in her dream or in her poem, "old man" "was a friend of [Bishop's] grandfather" (Bishop 64). Hence, the old man and their conversation about "the decline in the population / and of codfish and herring" recall Bishop's memory about her grandparents, and of course, her mother.

In "At the Fishhouse," Bishop compares the landscape to female body, or in Bonnie Costello's term, the "mother earth" (Costello 114) and Lorrie Goldensohn's term, the "mother sea" (Goldensohn 43). The landscape, indeed, reminds her about the death of her mother and her childhood in the sate of flux. Standing near the seashore like the "rocky breast," she watches the mysterious sea, which is threatening, but at the same time productive as the mother's body. The sea, the "clear gray icy water," suggests not only the death of Bishop's mother, but also her ambiguous feeling toward her mentally ill mother. Besides, the changeful seashore suggests her homeless childhood. She was like to stand "at the water's edge" always prepared to land and simultaneously to leave (Bishop 64).

The sea in "At the Fishhouse" suggests the flux. Moreover, it leads to the burning feelings and tastes bitter. The sea, as the matter of fact, relates to Bishop's experience of being drunk. Brett C. Millier, in "The Prodigal: Elizabeth Bishop and Alcohol," shows the connection between the sea and Bishop's alcoholism. He mentions, "the image of water that is flammable, dangerous, about to explode recurs frequently in Bishop's poems. And it occurs most often in her most self-reflective poems, poems whose composition corresponds in time with Bishop's most difficult negotiations with alcohol."

Indeed, "At the Fishhouse" is close associated with Bishop's personal experiences: her memory of Nova Scotia and mother, her traumatic childhood wanting maternal love, and her alcoholism. She, furthermore, creates images about Christianity in this poem. These images include the God-like "old man," the seal who knows the "Baptist hymns," and "Christmas trees" (Bishop 69-5). Christianity is part of her life, and of course, part of her knowledge.