Page 77

By Jack Joseph Smith

I wiped lashed winged, and spit myself out of the city tomb. Going where there was room running on hills high to see the river long named Tom move by the rocks, heaving winter into spring. I went leaving the ring of buzzing and smashing to feel finally my dream of youth born to be raised in the hot tempered town at the heart of steel, that would sting songs into my brain of a past I could not remember forever. I came here to this valley by way of railroad rails, dung ridden steam ships, and fancy ships too, that were clean with mast and jib tacking me along with sea summer wind sailing. I came to this valley by way Carvinals and Circus taverns, with fist fights flinging my spirit first across dirt floor before gates fitted my taste for God; Willing I wondered without hope out of the pleasure of holding on to that naked dream delight- ing devil deals to me about stopping. Now I fight for holding still in casting the law off my back, bore me by the fruits of extravance wine has brought. Imagination of the Indian left me last man on the track bended to a Wounded Knee before the courts.

Original Scan

Page 77

AI Interpretation

GPT

The speaker spits himself out of the city, follows railroads, ships, carnivals, taverns, and fights toward the Long Tom valley, and ends at Wounded Knee before the courts.

The page makes arrival in Oregon feel picaresque and haunted rather than peaceful. Rivers, steel towns, circus taverns, wine, and Indian memory all become forces pushing the speaker toward stillness.

Claude

A rock-and-roll drive through the Willamette Valley leads to the Junction City Scandinavian Festival beer hall and eventually a late-night visit to the melancholy lady Vivian, who was really Susan down by the river, living west of the industrial farm town tracks.

The woman in the cabin - English 800, poems, tapestries, pictures on the walls, no water - is one of the collection's most sympathetically observed female figures. The detail that her lack of water made it a shack, but her art made it sweet for her in the feats of too many hours, holds the disparity between creative life and material poverty without editorializing.