Page 4
By Jack Joseph Smith
By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
The page mixes regional pride, environmental wear, class texture, and rough humor into a portrait of place.
The voice keeps swinging between affection and criticism. Pittsburgh and its surrounding waters are treated as damaged but still thick with life.
The second half of 'Just Our Nature.' The region's losses get domesticated into pride: 'our whiskey has turned to beer,' the songs 'arriving at hillbilly,' bass in the Allegheny and a bluegil in the Mononghelia while 'the suffering of the Ohio's mutacion' breathes 'up from another world.' Everyone, well off and not, wants 'cabins and trailors, no structures.' It signs off as 'The beginning and the end of the American line / Pittsburgh. Pa.' - the poet claiming the place as both origin and terminus.