Page 106

By Jack Joseph Smith

Speaking then: when whatever it is that "makes" you speak i say that it is what is: [The question if there are any in this spacing between things.] that the best poetry is about romance called A then B and 1+1 equalling two later but first i think it gathers in the sermon of whatever it is that makes things grow not down (that's a sermon for you putting the A in things) where they belong ... that the heat of the best makes the worst that's much better ... if readers were poets and poets only spectators

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

A difficult handwritten prose fragment reflects on what makes speech happen, what poetry gathers, growth, sermons, ordering things, the heat of the best, and a reader/poet/spectator ending.

Even in partial form, the page is metapoetic: it asks after the force that makes speaking possible and links poetry to relation, growth, rough arithmetic, and the relation between readers and poets.

Claude

A meditative address on speech and poetry argues that meaning is not manufactured but simply is, using arithmetic and growth imagery to question what makes the best poetry good.

The bracketed aside about spacing between things signals a self-conscious pause in the argument, and the closing claim that the best makes the worst better inverts hierarchy, proposing that poets who only spectate, rather than readers, hold the passive role.