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By Jack Joseph Smith

Fashioned I care about the grandkids I care about being famous I care about seconds in my life I have been trying to write the way the crow fly"s: Like serving whiskey I won't do it But I've drunk it Responsibility is touching someone on the shoulder Beginning, middle, and ending Remember it as if you willed it, before you were born Watch the pain Yours, the one you see, and the part you don't know

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

This page weighs fame, grandchildren, time, and responsibility against the urge to write with the directness of a crow in flight.

The poem keeps ambition tied to care. Its definition of responsibility as touching someone on the shoulder is plain and physical, and the ending widens that care into attention to both visible and hidden pain.

Claude

'Fashioned' stacks its concerns in a plain triple confession - 'I care about the grandkids / I care about being famous / I care about seconds / in my life' - holding family, ambition, and time on the same level. The poetics are stated as a goal and a refusal: 'I have been trying to write / the way the crow fly's', and the abstemious 'Like serving whiskey / I won't do it / But I've drunk it'. The poem then defines its ethics in tactile terms - 'Responsibility is touching / someone on the shoulder' - and a fatalist memory, 'Remember it as if you willed it, / before you were born', closing on a wide injunction to 'Watch the pain' in all its registers: 'Yours, the one you see, / and the part you don't know'.