Page 430
By Jack Joseph Smith
By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
This page ranks poetry among the arts and insists that it is dangerous because its masters drive a person toward endurance, rejection, and the grave.
By comparing poetry to fighting, acting, music, and drawing, the poem makes art feel bodily rather than decorative. The handwritten additions sharpen acting as not caring 'About Anything' but oneself, while poetry's danger comes from a commitment that keeps pushing toward the grave.
''''Of Poetry' -- poetry like a gun, kept or spread. Poetry and dance made by what the body has done. 'Acting is all about not caring a god damn about anything but yourself, the greatest art of all.' Masters of poetry 'encourage you to go all the way to the grave.''''