By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
Aristotle, Alexander, Sisyphus, Achilles, blood, myth, and time are brought together to show how classical figures still measure modern danger, vanity, and intellectual drift.
The page is crowded, but productively so. It uses old names to ask what happens when struggle becomes too academic to remain real.
'Singled Out' drags the classical canon into rough street-talk: 'Aristotle and a climb through blood,' 'Alextanter,' 'kick up the rock Siscuphus,' and the threat of when 'we lose our achillus.' The myths are framed as live hazards - losing the heel 'will be something different, / possibly dangerous' - not academic decoration. The poem turns self-aware at the end, betting against its own erudition: 'Our question about time has not changed yet / But if it keeps on getting academic, / I'd hedge me bet,' the dropped dialect 'me bet' undercutting the high references.