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By Jack Joseph Smith

Oregon fields of SUGAR BEETS LAY across the Willimatte Valley The rock and roll beat of the fifties out of the 90 mile and hour 63 chevy A salty dog from Missouri at the wheel; unarmed Jack at shotgun trying to spell his name at age 33, and leeway laughing at the grain trucks roaring out the back window to North Pacific sea sat two teen aged boys of wealth and fame. The Junction City Scandanavian Festival ran a 100 yd. long beer hall along the West side of the railroad tracks to make sure the big high box cars wouldN't block the evening sun after it's afternoon southward spining down to rest over the coastal range. The breath of the tables were long enough to sprint on, and the constant clinking glass of Miller Malt pitchers of beer was enough to stop any Tom Cat from sipping. We were at the south entrance table under a giant black Walnut tree. A construction man with his nun, a family man from a split level home of his own making turning his head in anarchy toward Mexico, a LEAN grain transport agent sat loose for the long w summer spread of an Oregon evening, while his wife's thin painted lips remained poised in and out of the dream of theatre. Then there was the blind Psycholigest and his good Shy lined women. Now it was later in the night and I was alone between my San Francisco Window and mid chamber fireplace. I would go to the melincoly lady Vivan, who was really "Susan down by the River," but rather lived on the West side of our indust- rial farm town tracks. I was running down the red dog road to her cabin without water, which made it a shack, Old English 800 and poems and tabistries and pictures on the walls made it sweet for her and the guests of too many hours. And Daughter Venus

Original Scan

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AI Interpretation

GPT

"Festival Blindness" moves from sugar-beet fields, the Willimatte Valley, rock and roll, a 1963 Chevy, and the Junction City Scandanavian Festival into a late-night visit to Vivan/Susan's cabin.

The reviewed page links speed, festival drinking, Oregon social scenes, and erotic or moral uncertainty. Its movement from public summer tables to Susan's waterless cabin makes the landscape feel both communal and secretive, while the final handwritten invocation of Daughter Venus turns the visit toward myth.

Claude

The speaker picks black and red stones in contemplation while walking to Susan's cabin in the moonlit road, kisses his wife's best friend, and learns she is blind in her right eye - 'and facing her I felt a lie down in the left side of my soul.'

The moment of disclosure - Susan explaining she is actually blind in her right eye after the speaker has said he is sober and knows what he is doing - produces one of the collection's most haunting moral images: the lie sitting down in the left side of the soul, not yet decided. The stones picked from the road in contemplation prepare a meditation that the body then interrupts.