Anthologies and the claim "I'd sooner, except the penalties, kill a man than a hawk" have made "Hurt Hawks" one of Jeffers's best known poems. Some have taken the claim as proof of Jeffers's nihilism, others of his passionate advocacy of nature and the wild, and either way, we seem to have here the same sort of doctrinal pronouncement found in the published version of "Sign-Post." But "Hurt Hawks" is, finally, a different sort of poem. Unlike "Sign-Post," it is grounded in a specific situation, and Jeffers chose not to erase his own stake in that situation. It is worth remembering that in "Hurt Hawks" the speaker does kill the hawk with the broken wing in spite of what he claims. In fact part 2 of the poem is largely the speaker's attempt to explain--and come to terms with--having killed the hawk. . . .

Part 1, as it happens, was likely first a separate poem (titled "The Hurt Hawk"), written before Jeffers shot the injured hawk; after killing the hawk, he added part 2. This underscores the difference between the two sections. In part 1, the speaker seems secure in his ability to stand aside, observe his material, and pronounce its lessons (it resembles, that is, "Sign-Post" as published). In part 2, the initial claim--significantly it is implicitly a reaction to his having killed the hawk--marks the moment when the pose of distance drops away and initiates the mix of anguish, guilt, and awe that should remind us that there are two hurt "hawks" in this poem--the injured hawk of part 1 and the grieving "hawk," the speaker, of part 2 (part 2, that is, has something of the same confessional impulse of the initial draft of "Sign-Post" though it is clearly much finer work).

The doubleness of "Hurt Hawks"--not its shocking claim--is what has kept, I'd suggest, readers returning to it. The two parts ground each other, and the poem synthesizes the impulses that in "Sign-Post" remained mutually exclusive. It is simultaneously dramatically personal and yet prophetic in the sense that it bears witness to what Jeffers saw as nature's beautiful and terrible energy. And the way these dimensions interact keeps the poem from being either merely confessional or oppressively didactic. To the extent that we continue to read Jeffers as if he were a humanly one-dimensional figure who versified generalized propositions we will tend to miss the crucial difference between a piece like "Sign-Post" and one like "Hurt Hawks." We will also fail to realize that many other Jeffers poems--including a number of the narratives--are, like "Hurt Hawks," similarly and implicitly dialectical. Missing this, we miss much of the drama, resonance, and actual complexity both of the individual poems and of Jeffers's poetic project and career.