Page 268
By Jack Joseph Smith
By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
This rough, heavily revised draft of "My Son" praises inherited craft and grit while pushing toward a more troubled account of hurt, catastrophe, and a life shaped by unfinished adventure.
The poem begins with family trade: grandfather's garage, nuts and bolts, hands, grit, and machine work. Its praise darkens through catastrophe, hurt, and looking back, while the son's inherited craft becomes entangled with ancestry, adventure, and the institutions surrounding middle age.
My Son traces a lineage of craft and inheritance, describing a son who is young and unbent and possesses a trade passed down from his grandfather's garage, built from nuts and bolts and grass roots labor, then honed by hand since childhood. The poem pivots toward hardship through Catastrophe, hurt, Cherokee heritage, and a birth in adventure. Its close places the son in the middle of life against the bank-owners, casting personal craftsmanship and inherited identity in tension with larger economic and historical forces.