Page 243
By Jack Joseph Smith
By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
The saddle poem widens into tractors, furnaces, horseshoes, football, and a broken leg lifted into the stirrup, making damage and labor part of one continuing ride.
The rectangular tractor and oval furnace bring industrial shapes into the same field as horse tack, so the poem keeps crossing farm, ship, and body. Several rejected objects and actions accumulate like a life inventory, each one held in memory rather than discarded. When the broken leg is taken up without a hitch, pain is absorbed into motion instead of stopping it.
'The Saddle Again' opens out the bucking lyric into an inventory of kept and refused things: 'The peace of the rectangular tractor,' 'The consintration of a ships oval furnace,' 'The horse shoes I wouldn't toss / away from the keg,' 'The barefoot football I would not jealous / run or catch.' Damage is folded into motion at the end - 'Now she has my broken leg into the stirrup / Up and over the rig / Without a hitch' - so the injured rider is lifted back into the ride rather than stopped by the break.