Page 25

By Jack Joseph Smith

Alone Keneth Patchen did it best In Ohio Hemmingway did it worst in Idaho That should be enough Sorry, there is another story to tell Clear your hearts and tear your minds Find your worth and do not come down; it is the signigenifance way beyond, the terror they talk of now When you get old enough to see and not know Through beauty, a cell of any kind, some kind of land or even landmark, or street lost, with sign and cup, or taking it up again, with the better of the gun, or contagous, or and slipping away; crippled and dragging the streets you once leaped through Watching Christ belittled, as if even you, were a normal man "My sweetheart said goodby, or was it I" Our dreams are,not easy, our wisdom is frightening Our Blackness and our handeing, and our wonderful giving from thievery too takes our souls back to the beginning of books, which we write now, for our children, as it APPEAR we have been made, forever gone

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

Between Patchen and Hemingway, the poem turns literary judgment into a meditation on land, beauty, guns, Christ, and the uncertainty of farewell.

The page begins by ranking literary aloneness, then moves into a charged landscape of terror, beauty, guns, Christ, farewell, racialized selfhood, thievery, books, and children. The inserted or before slipping away keeps the middle passage syntactically open, while the revised ending suggests inheritance and disappearance; several handwritten corrections still need closer confirmation.

Claude

'Alone' opens by ranking deaths of writers - 'Keneth Patchen did it best In Ohio / Hemmingway did it worst in Idaho' - then refuses to stop there: 'Sorry, there is another story to tell.' It exhorts toward worth ('Find your worth and do not come down; / it is the signigenifance way beyond, / the terror they talk of now') before sliding into decline - 'crippled and dragging / the streets you once leaped through' - and 'Watching Christ belittled, as if even you, / were a normal man.' The close turns communal and racial: 'Our Blackness and our handeing, and our wonderful / giving from thievery too takes our souls back / to the beginning of books, / which we write now, for our children, / as it APPEAR we have been made, / forever gone.' This reading stays provisional: the page is needs-followup with uncertain handwriting around the Blackness and closing lines. Source spellings 'Keneth,' 'Hemmingway,' 'signigenifance,' 'goodby,' and 'handeing' are preserved.