Page 289

By Jack Joseph Smith

Of Poetry And Us Like a gun, you can keep it to yourself, or spread it around; I think it starts young; old as hell, before the cross of stepps, not as young as music or drawing, instinctive, lowering to reagions that are flat and higher than any mountain makes swords people; quick to strike, and last to leave for we make no judgements when we pick up our pen, and watch out for eternity, because everything we have written, we have done, thank you Andre Malraux; And I got lost in the morning, it must have been through thout, but we will find a way not making a deal with nessity, or giving it a look

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AI Interpretation

GPT

Of Poetry And Us compares writing to a gun and a pen, claiming every sentence is an act while refusing to bargain with necessity or thoughtless survival.

Poetry is dangerous because it can be hoarded or spread, and once picked up it makes "swords people" out of writers as surely as weapons do. Saying it is old as hell and before the cross pushes art back into a primordial human impulse, older than doctrine, music, and drawing. The Malraux reference turns literature toward history and action, while getting lost in the morning through thought makes consciousness itself feel like a trap that must be outwitted.

Claude

Of Poetry And Us treats writing as an instrument of force and permanence, opening with the blunt simile Like a gun, you can keep it to yourself, or spread it around to cast poetry as a weapon whose power lies in the choice to share it. The poem locates poetry's origins in instinct and antiquity, then stakes a moral claim through Andre Malraux that writers are bound to what they have written and done, collapsing the distance between art and action. The closing admission that the speaker got lost in the morning undercuts the confident opening with drift, ending on a resolve to avoid bargaining with nessity rather than a tidy conclusion.