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 at a bog whose reel 'Reels his elbow into the greatness of a Bluegill' against the 'nouveau-riche industrial science salesman' who 'Jets across the long exhaust marked sky'. The speaker asks whether 'these fast silver men' will 'ever come to know about death / Being at the edge of being a child?', while the boy stays 'With his feet on the ground'.

The poem contrasts two speeds: the jet's empty velocity toward 'nowhere' and the boy's absorbed, bodily stillness. Childhood attention becomes a kind of timelessness that outweighs progress, and the closing rhyme of 'down' and 'ground' settles the poem on the boy's side.