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By Jack Joseph Smith
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: talking to terror, guns are not your soul. I will stand in the square and say everything against what he does, still he is the best I have ever seen. A poet's dream whichever way you turn.