With all that hippy "One World One Love" stuff still decades on the horizon, Jeffers made this declaration: "the expression of a religious feeling, that perhaps must be called pantheism, though I hate to type it with a name. It is the feeling […] that the world, the universe, is one being, a single organism, one great life that includes all life and all things; and is so beautiful that it must be loved and reverenced; and in moments of mystical vision we identify ourselves with it." If that's not a spiritual statement, then we don't know what is.
And here's the thing: you can see this sentiment up and down, backwards and forwards, in every line of "Hurt Hawks." Why else would the speaker be so obsessed with the hawk, if he didn't feel one with it on some level.
Questions About Spirituality
- How would you describe the wild God of this poem? What qualities does this god possess? And how can you tell?
- Why might men who are dying be reminded of the wild God? Does that make them like the hawk in any way?
- Why would God grant mercy to those who ask for it and not otherwise? What might that say about the nature of mercy?
Chew on This
Each creature has its own relationship with God, and that's what this poem is all about.
Jeffers reminds us that in forming communities, men have lost touch with their own spirits.