penned in 1935, reading from Selected Poems 1963
Ten lines into a brief self-excoriating poem on the failure of his art to truly depict the natural wonder he perceived, Jeffers writes:
"—This wild swan of a world is no hunter's game,
Better bullets than yours would miss the white breast..."
On Jeffers writes for four lines, wondering if the poet's self-hatred is even worth note and advancing the case for the poet to stay his blind course, ever in search of something better than he, beyond his ken—the wonder that leaves a man yearning in the night for that very quality he found embodied in it's darkness.
This reader's take away of one of the Jeffers' most truncated efforts is that he was resetting, recharging, finding his new sense of literary gravity—fighters have such moments—many, and as a writer I have discovered them—no, they have discovered me—beyond physicality as well.
