Page 93

By Jack Joseph Smith

PUT YOUR MONEY IN NIETZSCHE The night before... We had a candle on the cover; as the holy whiskey burned in the stars away lots-of brains- And as the anarchist wax- from our less-then-care flame ate-away Nietzsche's name, so we continued to detain, his resurrection: toward our youth for the Danish in us: Yet on the spot up... At a Hobo rainbow wilder still dawn (remaining civilized?) Altogether I regarded Jesuit schoolboys memories After being away seven years on various foothills Without educationalized television Hamlet studies-- And I headed out for town... ...leaving our potatoe shack To learn how to spell his library name We had to some mention been judging... (between the fiddles and the fire wood) I had sensed then That all was well After all I'd heard so much bad stuff offed about the man called Nazi enough: That I easy put my two weeks hundred bucks in the book between the near done down desolate pages of the crazy snaked caveman, between the holding strings, scorched to their yellow bind through the wax to ash pealed jacket And our Hillbilly Heaven Had made one hell of a mess out of "Beyond Good And Evil" Later I realized after reading it a bit That the bad Nazi stuff wasn't quite it My hands had correctly put my money away from worry Because Nietzsche had lost his own names on purpose For a kind of vibration in life, that pickers don't need to steal

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

"Put Your Money in Nietzsche" turns a scorched, half-mocked book into an argument for reading past slogans and finding a harsher, freer kind of life in it.

The poem begins in comic ruin, with whiskey, candle wax, firewood, and a damaged copy of "Beyond Good And Evil," so philosophy enters through poverty and clutter rather than reverence. The speaker admits hearing "bad stuff" about Nietzsche and then discovering, through actual reading, that the easy accusation misses the point. What remains is a rough faith in a vibration of life that cannot be reduced to labels or stolen by "pickers."

Claude

'PUT YOUR MONEY IN NIETZSCHE' frames buying and defending a battered 'Beyond Good And Evil' as a backwoods conversion, where the speaker invests 'two weeks hundred bucks' in a book his 'Hillbilly Heaven' has half-destroyed by candle and 'holy whiskey'.

The comedy is precise: the candle's 'anarchist wax' literally eats 'Nietzsche's name' off the scorched jacket while the speakers 'detain his resurrection' between 'the fiddles and the fire wood.' The poem stages reading as a poor man's self-education -- seven years 'away on various foothills,' no 'educationalized television Hamlet studies,' leaving 'our potatoe shack / To learn how to spell his library name.' Crucially the speaker hears 'so much bad stuff' branding the man 'Nazi enough' yet, on actually reading, decides 'the bad Nazi stuff wasn't quite it.' The resolving claim -- 'Nietzsche had lost his own names on purpose' for 'a kind of vibration in life, / that pickers don't need to steal' -- argues for substance beneath the slogan. Source spellings 'goodby'-style 'potatoe' and 'less-then-care' belong to the page.