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By Jack Joseph Smith

Dear Steve and Penny It is very seldom that I use husband and wife in adress. Times have changed; or else I just never knew about what always was. Social gossip is in a practical way hurting in ... why and wherefore. It works (suggestivity) like the age old need to be not quite (as in English irony) dead, but with that last appearance what drama can be palor deemed into the dream. I will not get fancy with this letter, as my spelling has something to be delivered, but the cheese is Frence and the wine is bad. I am uncapaple of telling a story so let me write it: Trees and Stones I have seen trees that were really big I knes how one must pick up sawdust as a young dropped out boy. The finest thing about the branches was that they did not stop. And the greatest smell about the trail Was that at each ten miles there was dinamite. A pick up truck in sixty one had me roven The mountains had me done, but I thought the valleys looked like L.A. I joined alot of tribes meaning three and got put up in jail a little bit more And "God's Country" bade me back, many times for women sticks and music Yet Eastern Hell has me bound away from her again

Original Scan

Page 96

AI Interpretation

GPT

In a letter to Steve and Penny, the writer comments on marriage, gossip, spelling, cheese and wine before introducing Trees and Stones. The poem recalls large trees, work around sawdust, mountain travel, tribes and jail, then describes another departure under the pull of Eastern Hell.

The writer moves from a letter's social reflections into a poem about western work and movement. The final line addresses a woman or place as her without settling the referent. The first-person itinerary belongs to the poem and does not verify the author's history.

Claude

A typed letter, 'Dear Steve and Penny', about gossip and appearances, then 'I am uncapaple of telling a story so let me write it:' and the poem 'Trees and Stones', which ends 'Yet Eastern Hell has me bound away from her again'.

The poem sketches a working life in the woods and jail, and sets 'God's Country' against 'Eastern Hell'; the writer's claims belong to the letter.