Poem By Robinson Jeffers

Robinson Jeffers was a prominent American poet in the modern day era who changed the format of poetry with his prophetic and enlightening writings including “Hurt Hawks” and “Oh Lovely Rock”.

“Hurt Hawks” is Robinson Jeffers most outstanding poem. It is a two stanza poem with feelings from two different characters. This poem is almost as the title describes it. A hawk with a badly injured wing that will never fly again just wants to be put out of his misery. He doesn’t want to wait until he starves to death. That is how he would die since he can no longer hunt. The hawk just sits under a tree awaiting his death. Then when the hawk sleeps that night, he dreams of flying. Because of that dream he wakes up with a new energy. As the hawk sits there, he is ready to defend himself against anything with his sharp talons. Being in his injured state is very hard for him because he's used to be on top of the world. Yet, he is still in the mindset that nothing can take him on besides death itself. He is an arrogant hawk and he won't ask the "wild God of the world" for mercy. At this point Jeffers adds another point of view to the poem. A man finds the hawk, but he would rather kill another man than a creature with so much beauty. Instead he cares for the hawk for six weeks trying to nurse it back to health. He allows the hawk to wander freely, but the hawk always returns to the man and still cannot fly. To the man it seems like the bird is returning because it is almost asking for death since its life will never be the same. So, finally the man shoots the hawk to put it out of its misery. As the man watched the hawk fall he thought it was peaceful and calm, now that it gotten what it wanted. Rather than being the intense animal that it had ...

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...nciples that he bases his approach to poetry on in a few simple quotes; “poetry’s function is the passionate presentment of beauty and to be an intensification of life, not a refuge from it” (Hunt RJ’s Writings). Jeffers believed his poetry should be about permanent things and avoid feelings. Whereas other poets at the time tried to transform the actual world with their imaginations. Jeffers liked to comment on the ordinary parts of life so that one may discover more about it instead of creating an alternative to the ordinary that modern poets tried to do (Hunt RJ’s Writings). He also tried to show the world’s natural beauty in his poems.The fact that Jeffers was so authentic to his time period and even now--because of how he didn't agree with the way technology places us in an almost false environment--is the main reason why his work continues to speak to readers.