By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
The poem weighs rhyme against dream, sea against land, and adventure against disregard, letting wind and water carry away a speaker who does not feel he deserves the larger world.
It has a sad self-measurement to it. The page treats poetic form as one possible correction to moral and emotional negligence, with the source spellings `disreguard` and `differance` keeping that correction visibly imperfect.
'Rhyme Is Better' practices the very claim of its title, leaning on chimes - 'lost' / 'tossed,' 'sea' / 'lea' - while staging a confession of unworthiness. 'Across this place / Wooden and lost / Against a dream tossed,' the speaker asks 'What is it imagined last' and admits 'I do not deserve to be with the sea,' so he hands his failing to the water: 'Let the streams and rivers capture / My horrible disreguard / For adventure.' The close measures 'that differance / Between the lea / and the other way' and surrenders the verdict to motion - 'The wind takes.' The kept spellings 'disreguard' and 'differance' leave the self-correction visibly imperfect, which suits a poem that prefers form to confidence.