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By Jack Joseph Smith

The Riddle of death, so solve us all... Herman Melville

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

The Melville epigraph casts death itself as the riddle the book will keep returning to.

This page gives the whole collection a philosophical frame. It suggests that the poems will circle mortality without pretending they can fully solve it.

Claude

The Melville epigraph presents death as the riddle that must somehow solve every life.