By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
The page idealizes a woman through alley, kitchen, eucalyptus, canyon, starlight, and boulevard gleam, making desire feel both cinematic and strangely ancient.
The verified transcript sharpens the scene without changing its drift: attraction arrives as recognition before contact, and the speaker doubles that desire with each sighting.
'Attempt' idealizes a woman by placing her out of reach in time and setting: 'She belonged in another place / In time and grace / Beyond would be better.' The scene is half-cinematic, half-ancient, threaded through 'a back door / theatre alley' and 'a Canyon kitchen / Flowered by the ingrown stubs / of Eucalyptus.' She is made mythically young - 'younger than a star / Before the gleam of the Boulevard' - and her face becomes music: 'Same cheeks were slanted up as a song.' The close fixes desire as recognition prior to contact and then doubles it: 'I wanted her before the first time / Each way I saw her I wanted her twice.' The title's bare word 'Attempt' frames the whole reverie as a reach that may not arrive.