Page 1

The scan-verified opening page frames the manuscript as poems written and pictures taken during 1975 by Jack Joseph Smith.

The spare centered lines make the collection feel diaristic and archival from the start: not only a book of poems, but a year's record of written and visual work.

A colophon-like opening that dates the whole enterprise: 'Poems written', 'Picture taken', all 'During the year, of nineteen seventy five', signed 'Jack Joseph Smith'. The centered, widely spaced lines read like an inscription, binding word and image to a single calendar year and presenting the book as a dated personal record rather than a timeless artifact.