Gilbert Allen: On "Hurt Hawks"
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 ....