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By Jack Joseph Smith

The Literature Illusion May it not be true That the history of man has stopped the design of the gods of good Give name again Literature To give man complete stance on the stars That are of his own dreams and mistakes; abstracting his personal destany down to the earth progressions of himself: Faithlessness is the matter of the machine Do not let its BECO.2IING contend with ours eoeFrom the Moon being being more obvious than we While the modern computer Itgod grows with a grin through the television intention ecootvoward tote and taxpayerseee} and how can we mention any contemporary gain made toward god-in-God When Leader of Light's loss appears to ignite Menkind's salvation up in the certitude Elite for destruction Yet use of myth Spells our code Across a globe of illiterate goverrment Obviously more readable than we

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

Literature and myth are set against machine culture as rival ways of naming human destiny, with the poem warning that technology and media flatten the spiritual scale of human life.

The argument keeps asking whether human history has blocked access to something larger, then proposes literature as a way to restore that reach. Against that stands the grinning modern computer and television, which turn intelligence into a cold public system aimed at control, taxation, and destruction rather than transcendence. The poem is messy and crowded on purpose, sounding like a mind trying to defend imagination before it is absorbed by machinery.

Claude

'The Literature Illusion': long argument that literature must be renamed to give humans a complete stance on stars they invented themselves.

The poem treats literature as an emergency repair tool — something the species needs to call back into service because 'the machine' has taken over the becoming. 'Yet use of myth / Spells our code' is the poem's thesis. The image of the 'modern computer It-god' growing through television is an early instance of a suspicion that's now ordinary.