By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
"Mr. Powers" reads like a travel note turning immediately into poetic impulse, linking Washington, central California, and a remembered Catholic scene in Monterey before closing with a handwritten student signoff.
The page feels like the threshold to a cluster of poems, with the speaker announcing where he has been and how quickly the writing came once he got home. Jack at a Spanish Mass gives the piece its sly, human center, as if the real poem begins in an image that should be impossible and yet persists. The handwritten your / student / Lou ending makes the note feel addressed and personal rather than merely prefatory.
Mrs. Powers: a prose note; just back from Washington D.C. and central California, wrote three poems right off. You can't see Jack going to a Spanish Mass in Monterey.