Cracking Of The Mirror
By Jack Joseph Smith
AI Interpretation
The collection moves through war in Lebanon, factory work, jail conversations, childhood, sea-light, myth, and political anger. Its speakers connect private feeling with public violence without supplying a single chronology for the collection.
Factory output is set beside strained laborers, televised war beside bodily injury, and religious language beside guilt and gratitude. In the jail sequence, the narrator cannot confirm the cellmate's feared killing or explain his dream. Those limits matter alongside the poems' stronger claims about power and control.
A typescript collection whose title comes from the opening poem's 'cracking of the mirror'. It gathers short lyrics, aphorisms and longer sequences: the three-part ACID sequence, the prose L.A.C. account set in the Los Angeles County Jail, laborers' and industrial poems such as "Who's Technological Revolution?", 'The Wonderful Door', 'The Tower', the Siobhan poem and portraits such as 'Alfie in the Drowning Fred' and 'The Star'. Handwritten place and date annotations on some pages (Mount Lebanon, Pittsburgh, Eugene, Monroe in Oregon, Los Angeles; years from 1967 to 1984) mark individual sheets.
The poems keep testing the line between real and counterfeit, from 'Gold and gold plated are the same' to televised violence felt as guilt. The annotations show sheets from different years, so the collection is not treated as written at a single date, and the speakers' accounts of jail, work and family are kept as the poems' statements rather than biography. Source spellings are preserved, and a few unread handwritten words and one typed word remain omitted in the page records.
Contents
- Page 1 p. 1
- Page 2 p. 2
- He Ate As Others Ate p. 3
- An Americans Televised Lebanonese Philosophy pp. 4-8
- Back Then p. 9
- L.A.C. pp. 10-15
- In The Track Of Inflation Frames p. 16
- Pagan Except For Christ p. 17
- The Body and the Blood of Host pp. 18-19
- Acid pp. 20-22
- Across the Street from Two Thousand and One pp. 23-25
- Poverty Program Intrusion pp. 26-27
- General Birmingham and I Dropped p. 28
- Who's Technological Revolution? pp. 29-32
- The Blasted Blast pp. 33-34
- Sophisticated Cruelity p. 35
- No Biological Promise pp. 36-37
- Peter Fish Highjack's Humor p. 38
- All For Count Down Kill pp. 39-40
- Glancing p. 41
- Human Nature p. 42
- Willamette Valley Meat Cutter pp. 43-44
- The Wonderful Door pp. 45-47
- Incipid Gone p. 48
- Earth Take Your Time p. 49
- A Siobhan Poem pp. 50-52
- Alfie in the Drowning Fred pp. 53-54
- The Tower pp. 55-57
- Communication? p. 58
- Underneath p. 59
- From The Bay Window p. 60
- She Turned Her Back p. 61
- Soul Child Christmas Time p. 62
- Mount Lebanon Pennsylvania p. 63
- Literature and Material p. 64
- A Mechanic In His Workshop With His Kid Doing The Homework In Physics p. 65
- Dislocation p. 66
- Alcohol Sweetens The Terror p. 67
- The Drop Out Conclusion p. 68
- How Low Is Renaissance p. 69
- Inevitable p. 70
- William Blake: Jesus Was All Virtue p. 71
- Modern p. 72
- The Restraunt Of Kings p. 73
- Being Angry Is Believing The Anger p. 74
- The Almost In Literature p. 75
- I've Never Known The Name p. 76
- Honest Anger p. 77
- Having Five Kids p. 78
- Style Is Publication p. 79
- The Star p. 80
- Time, You Have No Right p. 81
- Beginning p. 82
- The Loss Of Adaptation p. 83
- The Medical Misunderstanding p. 84
- The Knowledge In Engagement p. 85
- Courage Consists In Remaining p. 86
- The Greatest Evil p. 87
- She Turned Her Back II p. 88
- Bumstead Hemmingway p. 89
- Fishing Outside Of Time p. 90
- The Sexual Six p. 91
- The Blackness In Argument p. 92
- If I Did Not Love Nancy p. 93
- LOYALITY TO THE NAIL p. 94