Page 29

By Jack Joseph Smith

Liza I got one hundred books in my head If I were to teach them however I would have to re read them over as we go; it is a reference to being there. as is something im your head and not necessarily academic, a part of your life that is,. and there I have seen the line, and I know about crossing it, and know about not going there as well, as I want to come and say things,. to the children is in my mind Cause it will be true The bad all the way along with hurt and faith and fum Across Me think of you I remember when I swam the Klimath River and then turned and swam back,. it makes

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

"Liza" presents reading as lived knowledge rather than scholarship, with the speaker wanting to tell children a truth made from hurt, faith, handwritten address, and the memory of turning back across the Klimath.

The hundred books in the head are not a curriculum but an interior life carried in the body. The poem keeps worrying the line between crossing and not crossing, knowledge and restraint, as if wisdom lies in knowing both. The handwritten 'Across' and 'Me think / of you' pull the page toward direct address, while the river memory gives the piece a physical test of return, turning truth into something swum through rather than merely taught.

Claude

Liza: I got one hundred books in my head, not academic, part of life. The Klamath swim out and back caps a riff about what teaching is, reference rather than curriculum.