Except insofaras the impulse to transcend his own species is uniquely human, Jeffers willingly renounces his kinship with his audience, those "communal people": "I'd sooner, except the penalties, kill a man than a hawk." The line's capacity to shock is intensified by the pun upon "accept," which pulls "Hurt Hawks" even farther beyond the human realm. Jeffers did later offer a disclaimer of sorts, at least according to his wife Una: "'The penalties did not mean only hanging or imprisonment, but also the inner revulsion .... There was no misanthropy involved, but only a comparison.'" This ingenious gloss encourages one to remember D. H. Lawrence's advice about distrusting the artist and trusting the tale. In effect, Jeffers redefines misanthropy to avoid falling under its heading: he loves not man the less but raptors more. Such redefinitions, of course, are a poet's prerogative, but this one trivializes the work that it purports to explain. "Hurt Hawks" undeniably expresses contempt for the reader, in an attempt to kindle a salutary self-loathing. If the reader, as a representative of humanity, is unredeemed, he is not unredeemable. "Communal people" may forget "the wild God of the world," but "men that are dying" do not. By remembering our mortality, which our everyday selves deny, we can become more like the hawks with whom we share it.