Page 20
By Jack Joseph Smith
By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
"Holler" answers the earlier woods poem by insisting the glimmer was always there, while distance, age, mountain, pasture, and direction all begin to lose their separateness.
The refusal to walk out of the trees feels like a refusal to leave the old vision behind. Bringing a stone home to prove how far one had gone is treated almost mockingly, as though measurement never settles what distance means. The handwritten notes around exception, standing, and people make the final turn feel like a revision of categories: mountain, pasture, place, and person all become ways to mark where one has stood.
A second 'Holler' insists the vision never left - 'I never walked out of the trees / I saw the glimmer all the time / no matter what they say.' The stone-home custom returns half-mockingly ('as if that / would make a difference'), and the poem dissolves its own categories: 'I never thought there was / any difference between Where I stood / between a mountain and a pasture,' ending on 'Places I changed direction in' beneath the handwritten 'People.'