"Fishing by Obstinate Isles."

My robot fish story was rejected! It's one of the favorite things I've written. The readers did not get it, were not engaged, and it did "not resonate."

I think my writing group gave me bad advise apropos the beginning, but that can be fixed. I'll send it out again, of course, because I am so taken with the character.

How am I feeling about this? Absolutely rotten. Ezra Pound said it better. "Out of key with his time" and "fishing by obstinate isles." Yup.


Hugh Selwyn Mauberly [excerpt]

For three years, out of key with his time,
He strove to resuscitate the dead art
Of poetry; to maintain "the sublime"
In the old scene. Wrong from the start--
No, hardly, but seeing he had been born
In a half-savage country, out of date;
Bent resolutely on wringing lilies from the acorn;
Capaneus; trout for factitious bait;
[idmen gar toi pant, hos eni Troiei]
Caught in the unstopped ear;
Giving the rocks small lee-way
The chopped seas held him, therefore, that year.
His true Penelope was Flaubert,
He fished by obstinate isles;
Observed the elegance of Circe's hair
Rather than the mottoes on sun-dials.
Unaffected by "the march of events,"
He passed from men's memory in l'an trentuniesme
De son eage; the case presents
No adjunct to the Muses' diadem.

Why do I even remember this old "stuff" from college English? At least when I give a speech at Toastmasters, I've always lauded for 'colorful speech.'

Onward, onward.

The David Lodge book, Therapy, is good, well, therapy. I laugh like an idiot every night when I am reading it.

Grapeshot