By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
"Ego" turns poetic practice into a sequence of keeping and salvaging, where thought must be thought, ego is not worship, and geometry and power remain after devotion has failed.
The handwritten opening sharpens the page's argument: thought is not just content but an act that has to be performed. The crossed-out deletions make the page revise away from over-explaining thought and toward a more direct instruction to read between the lines. Geometry matters because it suggests structure without worship, while the ending values toughness of mind as the refusal to throw thought away.
The handwritten opening makes thought an act, not just content - 'Thought is to think / To think should BE thought' - and separates ego from self: 'Ego is one, And one is not / the ego.' The poetics that follows is salvage: 'Read between the lines / Save that part,' promising 'Geometry' and structure but 'no worship,' 'cause you won't get to / the end of it.' What survives is hard-mind 'power,' 'tough enough not to throw / your mind away,' under the recurring 'Representations included' / 'What a collection.'