By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
"Which Way You Turn" pits terror, memory loss, and political contradiction against the strange conviction that one’s turn can still belong to poetry.
The poem refuses clean allegiances, letting admiration and denunciation occupy the same breath. Guns, history, and failing memory all threaten to strip the self of depth, yet the speaker insists that the soul is not identical with violence. The closing claim makes poetry sound less like decoration than the last form in which contradiction can be honestly held.
'Which Way You Turn' refuses a single allegiance: standing 'On both sides,' the speaker is 'talking to terror' yet insists 'guns are not your soul,' and wonders how 'a loss of memory / can have open arms.' The square-speech vow holds praise and denunciation in one breath - 'say everything against what he does, still he is the best I have ever seen' - before declaring that whichever way you turn 'is a poet's dream,' as if only poetry can house such contradiction honestly.