Image: “Yellow Flowers” by Carla Paton. “The Rote Stuff” was written by Gary Glauber for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, September 2023, and selected as the Editor’s Choice. (PDF / JPG)
Comment from the series editor, Megan O’Reilly: “I like the non-literal approach Glauber takes to Alison Bailey’s gorgeous image, the idea of repeated failed attempts at romance as robotic in nature–‘[h]abit deadens the soul,’ the poet writes. Bailey’s sympathetic robot, with its empty but somehow poignantly human ‘eyes,’ is easy to envision as an oft-jilted suitor bracing for one more attempt at love. I also appreciate the touches of repetitive contrast here–‘beating on unbeaten,’ ‘exceptional exception,’ ‘curse into cure,’ and how they reflect the paradoxical way a robot might think, with a superior intellect but also perhaps an inability to understand the nuances of human language. By the end, I found myself rooting for our robot narrator when the fateful door opens to reveal ‘perhaps what all dreams manifest.’”
