Page 105

By Jack Joseph Smith

FISHING OUTSIDE OF TIME At the sensation of the final fatal fall Before the beneath of the bog Where a fisherman boy's reel Reels his elbow into the greatness of a Bluegill Before the knowledge of Plankton This boy is a vision of grandeur While the nouveau-riche industrial science salesman Jets across the long exhaust marked sky Split second the pilot crossed the pond Of a lilly banked liquid mud clovered round Bubble sucked at the center however By deeply drawing reflective holes of water Where respected whirl pools twirl Their inch at the surface Will these fast silver men across the sun Passing natural cylinders swirling forces Into bottomless wells that have exits; But they are to nowhere when one gets there Will they ever come to know about death Being at the edge of being a child? The boy at this moment dosen't care to share Any approach of sight with the speed of light The boy's mind is too busy going down With his feet on the ground

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

A boy fishing by a bog becomes the still center of the poem while machines, speed, and modern knowledge rush meaninglessly overhead.

The strongest contrast is between the fisherman boy, absorbed in the reel and the water, and the industrial pilot or salesman streaking across the sky. Scientific language like plankton and whirlpools is present, but it does not displace the boy's grounded, bodily attention; he is "too busy going down / With his feet on the ground." Death hovers at the edge of the scene, yet childhood here is defined by concentration so complete that the larger systems of speed and progress lose their authority.

Claude

'FISHING OUTSIDE OF TIME' sets a boy reeling 'his elbow into the greatness of a Bluegill' against the 'nouveau-riche industrial science salesman' jetting overhead, making stillness outweigh speed.

The poem builds on competing velocities: the boy at the bog 'Before the knowledge of Plankton' is 'a vision of grandeur,' while the pilot's exhaust marks the sky and the 'respected whirl pools twirl / Their inch at the surface.' The real stake is a question, not a verdict -- whether 'these fast silver men across the sun' bound for 'bottomless wells that have exits ... to nowhere' will 'ever come to know about death / Being at the edge of being a child.' The closing posture is the poem's ethic: the boy 'dosen't care to share / Any approach of sight with the speed of light,' his 'mind ... too busy going down / With his feet on the ground.' Source spellings 'lilly,' 'dosen't,' and the spaced 'whirl pools' are kept as written.