Akin

By Jack Joseph Smith

My sorrow does not send me back into sorrow My sorrow is so strange and mystic it does not stray To leave a leaf or pass a path; a quarry given a gultch taken, I am blessed to be beneath To look up and go again is my gain This care for me is of one who has not lost I am the cowboy dream, I am the wrangler I have left responsiblity, I am the one who, has gained fame for doing nothing I am the absolute infinity, a power, for the loss of my own fear, the star, that never had to try I see my own and the rest go by They work and seek, aside my flashing metaphor, I am at best serving at a soup kitchin, I only start to stop the beginning of the end I leap my soul into the Loard of you For I am the one who knows, that dreams do not work backwards I am the guest of the song, I am the lost in the wars, I am the bird they have finally found intellagence from, forgive me, I am the first white Indian there ever was, Amd thats why Jesus would say there is no differance between him, Marco Polo and James Joyce, you know what I mean Pittsburgh, Pa, he really would say that. .

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

A self-mythologizing poem that moves from sorrow and cowboy bravado toward forgiveness, Jesus, and imagined kinship with Marco Polo and James Joyce.

Claude

A litany of grand self-definition that opens by refusing grief's loop - 'My sorrow does not send me back into sorrow' - and builds a mythic resume: 'I am the cowboy dream, I am the wrangler', the one who 'has gained fame for doing nothing', 'the absolute infinity'. The boasts keep sinking - 'at best serving at a soup kitchin', 'the lost in the wars', 'the bird they have finally found intellagence from' - until 'forgive me' opens onto the strangest claim, 'I am the first white Indian there ever was', and a report that Jesus would say there is 'no differance / between him, Marco Polo and James Joyce'. The poem ends by addressing its hometown: 'you know what / I mean Pittsburgh, Pa, he really would say that'.

The title names what the poem wants, which is kinship. Each self-definition tries to join the speaker to something larger - the cowboy myth, infinity, a star 'that never had to try', the Lord ('I leap my soul into the Loard of you') - while the undercutting lines keep him among ordinary and lost people. 'forgive me' is not the end of the poem but its hinge into a claim of mixed identity, 'the first white Indian', which reads at once as apology and as a wish to belong on both sides of an American divide. The Jesus of the close levels himself, the traveler Marco Polo, and the modernist James Joyce into one company, the poem's final version of being akin. Speaking to 'Pittsburgh, Pa' as 'you' turns the litany into talk with a hometown, and 'he really would say that' has the speaker vouching for his theology against local doubt. 'dreams do not work backwards' remains the one hard rule under the swagger. Source spellings 'gultch', 'responsiblity', 'kitchin', 'Loard', 'intellagence', 'Amd', and 'differance' are preserved; 'metaphor' and 'of you' follow handwritten corrections on the scan.