Page 200
By Jack Joseph Smith
By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
This fuller "Nancy Ann" poem enlarges the lovers' back-to-back alliance into a grand, lawless fidelity measured against rivers, stars, and the refusal to soften themselves with confession.
Sea, heaven, hell, and wind give the page a mythic scale, but the emotional core remains the same shared defense of a life they knew together. Their refusal to ask forgiveness and their failure to tell the truth are not treated as shameful corrections; they are part of the fierce condition of the bond. The final saxophone and sandal line keeps the poem loose and dangerous, undercutting delicacy with swagger.
The fullest 'Nancy Ann' enlarges the back-to-back alliance into a grand, lawless fidelity. It opens on the mythic close of the earlier drafts - 'Exquisite as the surface, the sea, / the slanted heaven,, and the never / slanted hell' - then returns to shared defense of 'the yearning / life we knew so well.' Their refusals are pride, not shame: of 'the rivers we crossed, / we never asked them to forgive us,' and neither took time 'to tell the truth, that is the / way it is when stars are in your mind / instead of in the sky.' The swaggering last line undercuts delicacy with menace: 'just because / I don't play the saxophone,. doesn't / mean that I am afraid in sandle shoes.'