By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
Shout shifts from proclamation into restraint, moving through brightness, scale, and control before ending in a vow of quiet during trouble.
The title suggests noise, but the poem resolves in silence. That reversal matters: it makes grandeur, oceans, and mountains seem less like occasions for domination than reminders of how little screaming accomplishes.
Titled 'Shout', the poem withholds the shout. It opens on hard permanence - 'Still is a diamond' that 'has blemished' - and on a relativism where 'It depends on where you stand' and 'Mountains change like toys for us'. The grandiose claim to 'control seasons as thought' collapses into a vow of restraint: 'Out in the middle of the ocean / we won't scream', so 'When their is trouble / Let us be quiet' makes silence the disciplined answer to the title.