When contemplating writers, it is not uncommon for many to lump them together on account of subject matter. Sure, it is shallow, but it is easy marketing. Imagine it—any nature writer is ‘just like Loren Eiseley’ and any gay, black political essayist who writes on race is ‘just like James Baldwin.’ Anyone who writes of death is ‘just like Sylvia Plath,’ or anyone spiritual is ‘just like Rilke.’ (How convenient a comparison, albeit even if the writing itself is lacking in skill or depth.) Years ago, I got into an argument with a professor who claimed that some random ‘nature’ writer was ‘just like Loren Eiseley.’ She argued this after having complained about the lack of intellectual writing presented within university courses. And while I did agree with her initial statement regarding the dearth of quality writing as presented in universities, when she got to examples, she was running on full emotion. (Where goes the intellectualism?) In short, she merely ‘liked’ certain banal nature writers and lumped them beside Eiseley ‘just because.’ Why? Well, it is easy. They both write about nature!
So, if everything is dependent on subject matter, then one could easily lump Robinson Jeffers beside Ted Hughes ‘because they both wrote about hawks.’ However, in terms of quality, these two poets could not be more different. The professor could not see that by relying on subject over nuance, that she was, in effect, devaluing the superior writer as result. In addition, any Irish collection of short stories will inevitably be hailed, ‘just like James Joyce,’ or any book about the sea is ‘just like Melville.’ The list goes on.
So, I thought I would do a contrast. Let’s begin with Ted Hughes. His first poetry book, The Hawk in the Rain, is by far the best he’s written and that is not saying much. While it isn’t a terrible book, it is more mediocre, mechanical, and inert. (It actually reads like 1956 Sylvia Plath.) While there are a few nice lines here and there, so what? Those are dart tosses. Rather, his verse lacks any organic verve and it is as though we can see him counting syllables and checking boxes as to what to include:
The Hawk In The Rain
I drown in the drumming ploughland, I drag up
Heel after heel from the swallowing of the earth’s mouth,
From clay that clutches my each step to the ankle
With the habit of the dogged grave, but the hawk
Effortlessly at height hangs his still eye.
His wings hold all creation in a weightless quiet,
Steady as a hallucination in the streaming air.
While banging wind kills these stubborn hedges,
Thumbs my eyes, throws my breath, tackles my heart,
And rain hacks my head to the bone, the hawk hangs
The diamond point of will that polestars
The sea drowner’s endurance: and I,
Bloodily grabbed dazed last-moment-counting
Morsel in the earth’s mouth, strain towards the master-
Fulcrum of violence where the hawk hangs still,
That maybe in his own time meets the weather
Coming from the wrong way, suffers the air, hurled upside down,
Fall from his eye, the ponderous shires crash on him,
The horizon traps him; the round angelic eye
Smashed, mix his heart’s blood with the mire of the land.
This is not only the first poem within Hughes’s collection, but it is by far one of the best. But having said that, the verse has a stagnant quality, as it reads like a young person wrote it. ‘But he was young when he wrote it!’ you want to say. And yes, this would not be so bad had Hughes shown a propensity for poetic growth, but his verse only got worse with age and time. (That this is one of his better poems is telling.) Not only that, there is also quite a bit of doggerel within this collection (e.g., ‘Song’ and ‘Childbirth’), not to mention his verse takes on a lifeless quality, as he engages in clichés and melodrama. (‘Heart,’ ‘Blood,’ ‘Death’s door,’ ‘Madness,’ ‘Wounds,’ etc.) Also, his end lines are weak. Note the melodrama in the opening stanza, as well as the pedestrian, overwrought phrasings:
I drown in the drumming ploughland, I drag up
Heel after heel from the swallowing of the earth’s mouth,
From clay that clutches my each step to the ankle
With the habit of the dogged grave, but the hawk
He ‘drowns and drags up’, as ‘the earth swallows’. Lots of excess modifiers, overdone alliteration that feels forced and unnatural. ‘Dogged grave’—ugh. Melodramatic and mechanical. Is there some great music? No. And in the following stanzas there are some clichés: ‘Tackle my heart,’ ‘To the bone,’ ‘Bloodily,’ ‘Throws my breath,’ ‘Violence,’ and so on. Tell me, readers, are there any lines herein that you recall immediately after reading?
Then finally note the melodrama in the end stanza:
Coming from the wrong way, suffers the air, hurled upside down,
Fall from his eye, the ponderous shires crash on him,
The horizon traps him; the round angelic eye
Smashed, mix his heart’s blood with the mire of the land.
Again, is this bad? While I have certainly seen worse, the melodrama and overwrought verse is evident. Just a few tweaks could have made this better written. As example:
Coming the wrong way, he suffers. The upside down air
from his eye falls the ponderous shires,
The horizon traps—the round angelic eye
Smashes, his mire of land.
This is merely a suggestion, and while I can see a Ted Hughes fan getting pissed (as in angry, not drunk) over my suggestion, allow me to remind you that what he wrote isn’t that good to begin with. Ted was, after all, no Robinson Jeffers. So, onto ‘Hurt Hawks’:
I
The broken pillar of the wing jags from the clotted shoulder,
The wing trails like a banner in defeat,
No more to use the sky forever but live with famine
And pain a few days: cat nor coyote
Will shorten the week of waiting for death, there is game without talons.
He stands under the oak-bush and waits
The lame feet of salvation; at night he remembers freedom
And flies in a dream, the dawns ruin it.
He is strong and pain is worse to the strong, incapacity is worse.
The curs of the day come and torment him
At distance, no one but death the redeemer will humble that head,
The intrepid readiness, the terrible eyes.
The wild God of the world is sometimes merciful to those
That ask mercy, not often to the arrogant.
You do not know him, you communal people, or you have forgotten him;
Intemperate and savage, the hawk remembers him;
Beautiful and wild, the hawks, and men that are dying, remember him.
II
I’d sooner, except the penalties, kill a man than a hawk; but the great redtail
Had nothing left but unable misery
From the bones too shattered for mending, the wing that trailed under his talons when he moved.
We had fed him for six weeks, I gave him freedom,
He wandered over the foreland hill and returned in the evening, asking for death,
Not like a beggar, still eyed with the old
Implacable arrogance. I gave him the lead gift in the twilight. What fell was relaxed,
Owl-downy, soft feminine feathers; but what
Soared: the fierce rush: the night-herons by the flooded river cried fear at its rising
Before it was quite unsheathed from reality.
Jeffers had a skill for free verse that could not only match, but also exceed Walt Whitman. His long lines are evidence of this, as his verse explodes when it interjects. Consider the opening:
The broken pillar of the wing jags from the clotted shoulder,
The wing trails like a banner in defeat,
No more to use the sky forever but live with famine
And pain a few days: cat nor coyote
Will shorten the week of waiting for death, there is game without talons.
Immediately we are presented with injury, and Jeffers achieves his power via music in just the initial lines: pillar, shoulder, banner, forever, broken, from, pain, days, waiting, game. Note there is no mention of blood, but rather, a ‘clotted shoulder.’ Then we get the internal dream of the hawk, which ‘dawn ruins.’ Jeffers is also not shy when dipping into existentialism:
The wild God of the world is sometimes merciful to those
That ask mercy, not often to the arrogant.
You do not know him, you communal people, or you have forgotten him;
Intemperate and savage, the hawk remembers him;
Beautiful and wild, the hawks, and men that are dying, remember him.
While the hawk is hurt and dying, Robinson Jeffers uses that image as metaphor—‘beautiful and wild,’ and for this, dying men will remember within their final, meek moments. Death is, after all, more than mere inconvenience. In this world, coyotes are the enemy.
Then, in perhaps his most famous line, Jeffers not only tells a story but also employs his philosophy:
I’d sooner, except the penalties, kill a man than a hawk; but the great redtail
Had nothing left but unable misery
From the bones too shattered for mending, the wing that trailed under his talons when he moved.
Note that he relays this scene without excess melodrama, and manages to capture pathos without it feeling like a writing exercise. Finally, the end:
I gave him the lead gift in the twilight. What fell was relaxed,
Owl-downy, soft feminine feathers; but what
Soared: the fierce rush: the night-herons by the flooded river cried fear at its rising
Before it was quite unsheathed from reality.
The lines are poetic and organic. Phrases are more active, rather than merely flat and inert. In short, Robinson Jeffers’s verse soars, while Ted Hughes’s verse stagnates. Wonderful phrases fill this poem: ‘The wild God of the world,’ ‘the broken pillar of the wing,’ ‘I gave him the lead gift in the twilight,’ ‘there is game without talons,’ ‘unable misery/ from the bones too shattered for mending,’ and on.
So, ask yourselves, readers, which lines do you remember? Jeffers’s verse is full of freshness and verve, while Hughes’s reads more like an obligation littered with clichés. Just compare the final couplets and see how on the surface they could appear similar yet are nothing alike in skill:
The horizon traps him; the round angelic eye
Smashed, mix his heart’s blood with the mire of the land.
—Hughes
Soared: the fierce rush: the night-herons by the flooded river cried fear at its rising
Before it was quite unsheathed from reality.
—Jeffers
Hughes’s couplet lies flat, while Jeffers’s excites, e.g., ‘cried fear.’ And considering these are both poems about hawks, ask which is more marred by cliché and lack of skill versus that which is more active not just in terms of verbs but verve?
Ok, so you are thinking, ‘Hughes’s poem isn’t that bad! Why pick on his early verse? What about his later work?’ Well, my answer is 1) Hughes never improved as a poet, but only got worse with age. And 2) Hughes’s poem is an example of verse that, if it had been given intelligent feedback, might have been a good-solid poem. But great? Absolutely not. Jeffers’s poem is great and shows deft skill, music, and depth while Hughes, as he writes, seems to be checking boxes from an outline. ‘Must include all the proper imagery… 1) Blood 2) Heart 3) Violence, etc.’
In short, Ted Hughes is Lars Von Trier to Robinson Jeffers’s Ingmar Bergman. Nuance matters, and that two poets ‘both wrote about hawks’ is only relevant insomuch as it is for contrasting them in this essay. Subject and identity are shallow—nothing more than mere marketing tactics. Notice and appreciate the nuance, and look to the craft—lest all who suffer become nothing more than echoes of Ted’s first wife. But that is another story entirely.
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More from Jessica Schneider: Shadows & Windows: On Chris Marker’s “La Jetée” (1962), A Cityboy Finds Meaning: On “Cityboy” by Bruce Ario, Why Ryan Murphy’s “Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story” (2022) Misses All Perspective