Page 175
By Jack Joseph Smith
By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
This page frames the imagined bird as something stilled, then turns to a thought that reaches the end by releasing correctness, poetic control, and fixed form.
The handwritten title and the later No LEVEL / No form / No finding / No finish note make the page feel like a poetics of refusal. Its jars and fruit image rejects preservation or neat representation, while the wolf howl and snarl keep poetry between distance and threat. The ego is present, but its last movement is not mastery; it no longer cares whether it gets the answer right.
Under its handwritten title about a bird that 'stays / still,' this 'Ego' page reaches 'A thought way out there to think' that arrives 'thinking, / nothing at all' yet calls itself 'a perfect collection.' It rejects neat preservation - 'It isn't like Ball & Kerr jars, / caming fruit' - because 'the last of the ego' 'dosen't care, / if it gets it right or not.' Poetry is held 'Kind as a wolf's distant howl' and 'Terrible as is close to a snarl,' and the right-margin note refuses all completion: 'No LEVEL / No form / No finding / No finish.'