Far University

By Jack Joseph Smith

The was a place I see that was near There must have been a time that was clear You give it a notch in a tight rope You give it a hitch in a sail or a car I take power and cross bounds Most take power and stay Simple is not slight of wounds Only I know why they have not gone away I'll change the meter as I please Through you laso, through your lariptte, yes toss your rope toward me I'll strip you for you hang me, I've seen you alll, you collage bums

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

A lean challenge poem that turns rope, meter, and distance into a struggle over power, education, and class contempt.

Claude

The 'far university' is both geographical and social — a place of education seen from a distance by someone who measures distance in rope and meter rather than miles. The poem turns the gap between working-class experience and academic authority into a taut line that both connects and separates.

The struggle in the poem is over who gets to call learning legitimate. Rope and meter are the speaker's forms of knowledge; the university's are different but no more real, and the poem's lean challenge is to insist on that equivalence.