By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
This page titled 'This Meaning' moves from the Earth, walking, poems, talk, and a double dream to the sameness of towns, shaks, little things, abandoned dreams, and ivy's outside.
Because the transcript was already close to the scan, the page's modesty is the main point. It locates meaning in repeated towns and small outer details rather than in a grand revelation.
'This Meaning / Of the Earth' is a poem of sameness and small attention. Its imperatives -- 'Talk a walk / See her / Hear thepoems / Hear the talk' -- give way to a confession of dryness: 'It has been so long / since I have had / a double dream.' The speaker anticipates the reader's verdict -- 'It all looks the same / Definately inbetween' -- and reduces geography to 'Every town is just / a bunch of shaks.' It closes on a watched, marginal image: 'Watch little things / quit dreams / on the outside / of ivy.' Source spellings ('thepoems,' 'Definately,' 'shaks') are kept.