A Study Guide for Robinson Jeffers's "Hurt Hawks"

By Gale and Cengage

A Study Guide for Robinson Jeffers's "Hurt Hawks," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Poetry for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Poetry for Students for all of your research needs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cengage Learning - Gale
• Release date: Aug 19, 2016
• ISBN: 9781535825221

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Hurt Hawks

Robinson Jeffers

1928

Introduction

Hurt Hawks, published in 1928 in the collection Cawdor and Other Poems, is one of Robinson Jeffers most noted pieces. In it Jeffers presents life as composed of two primary forces: that which is strong, dynamic, and noble and that which is weak, passive, and tame. Evident, too, in Hurt Hawks is Jeffers’s overall disatisfaction with humankind, which he believed to be destroying itself through stupidity and selfishness. The line I’d sooner … kill a man than a hawk has encountered much objection, but many readers are attracted to Jeffers’s underlying philosophy of inhumanism, which he defined as a shifting of emphasis and significance from man to not-man; the rejection of human solipsism and recognition of the transhuman magnificence—essentially the belief that humanity needs to rid itself of self-centeredness and egocentrism in order to appreciate the greatness of all creation and establish a healthy relationship with nature, the earth, and the animal