By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
Insight comes from return: the planted tree, the changed sky, early morning men, and a river running in thought from Western Pennsylvania to Western Oregon all show that understanding depends on revisiting what once seemed ordinary.
The corrected transcript sharpens the poem's statement of poetics. Insight is not revelation from nowhere; it is seeing the same world again after living through it, then being allowed to come, go, and change.
A poetics of return and revisitation. The opening thesis ties understanding to bareness - 'When it is barren is when / we see the work we have done' - and the proof is accrued through coming back: 'until I came back to the tree / I planted', crossing 'a street to seee / the sorrow I never saw', watching 'the sky change', registering why 'men are / different at six o clock / in the morning'. The continental span, 'a river the same / from Western Pennsylvania / to Western Oregon', makes insight a matter of recognizing sameness across distance. The closing couplet defines the faculty as freedom itself: 'Insight lets you come and go / Insight lets you change'. Source spelling 'seee' is kept as written.