By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
"Mrs. Powers" reads like a travel note turning immediately into poetic impulse, linking Washington, central California, and a remembered Catholic scene in Monterey.
The page feels like the threshold to a cluster of poems, with the speaker announcing where he has been and how quickly the writing came once he got home. Jack at a Spanish Mass gives the piece its sly, human center, as if the real poem begins in an image that should be impossible and yet persists. Its abrupt ending makes the page feel like a door left half open.
Mrs. Powers: a prose note; just back from Washington D.C. and central California, wrote three poems right off. You can't see Jack going to a Spanish Mass in Monterey.