By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
The poem treats writing like building a lean-to, insisting that any true climax must rise from grounded structure or collapse under pressure.
Its central metaphor is architectural: line, ridge, support, and ground all describe how a poem or thought must be made. The climax is not a burst of feeling detached from craft but the point held up by everything beneath it. Wind and burial make failure physical, so artistic weakness becomes a real fall rather than a merely technical mistake.
'LITERATURE AND MATERIAL' compares the shape of a piece of writing to building a lean-to: 'The length of the line to the climax / Is like the look from the side / on the lean-to;', while 'the end is the short line that / holds the support of the ridge'. Both directions 'must be built / from the ground' or 'the climax or the ridge / will fold', and it ends 'Unless your not afraid of falling / with it / Or being buried by it'.
The poem treats literary form as carpentry, where the rise to a climax and the short closing line must bear weight together. Its warning applies to both minds and shelters, which can collapse 'from the mind or from the wind'. The last stanza turns craft advice into a dare, admitting that some writers accept the risk of the structure falling on them.