Page 51

By Jack Joseph Smith

The Literature Illusion May it not be true That the history of man has stopped the design of the gods of good Give name again Literature To give man complete stance on the stars That are of his own dreams and mistakes; abstracting his personal destany down to the earth progressions of himself: Faithlessness is the matter of the machine Do not let its BECOMING contend with ours ...From the Moon being being more obvious than we While the modern computer Itgod grows with a grin through the television intention ...toward tots and taxpayers...; and how can we mention any contemporary gain made toward god-in-God When Leader of Light's loss appears to ignite Mankind's salvation up in the certitude Elite for destruction Yet use of myth Spells our code Across a globe of illiterate government Obviously more readable than we

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

Literature and myth are set against machine culture as rival ways of naming human destiny, with the poem warning that technology and media flatten the spiritual scale of human life.

The argument keeps asking whether human history has blocked access to something larger, then proposes literature as a way to restore that reach. Against that stands the grinning modern computer and television, which turn intelligence into a cold public system aimed at control, taxation, and destruction rather than transcendence. The poem is messy and crowded on purpose, sounding like a mind trying to defend imagination before it is absorbed by machinery.

Claude

'The Literature Illusion' asks 'May it not be true / That the history of man has stopped the design / of the gods of good', calls on Literature to 'give man complete stance on the stars', and warns 'Do not let its BECOMING contend with ours' (a word whose typed spelling is uncertain) as 'the modern computer Itgod grows with a grin / through the television intention'. It ends 'Across a globe of illiterate government / Obviously more readable than we'.

The poem sets literature and myth against a machine age whose 'Faithlessness is the matter of the machine', coining 'Itgod' for technology worshipped through screens aimed at 'tots and taxpayers'. It hopes that 'use of myth / Spells our code', treating story as the human program that can resist a mechanical one. The closing irony is that illiterate governments are easier to read than the people they rule.