Sometimes a poem attacks you like a flower.

You’re riffling a book of poems, waiting, perhaps, for the chicken to cook. A chicken, in my experience, repays 75 minutes of roasting at 350 degrees and penalizes any variance from that ideal. So you wait. What can you do with seven minutes?

I keep several fat anthologies by my work-bed for such exigencies. Wasting time I feel a wastrel. No, no doom-scrolling, please, not again. Here’s a poem. And it smacks.

By Robinson Jeffers. A name known from college years but not much admired then. Too accessible, polemical. Unfashionable. Obliquity back then was the bees’ knees, keeping professors busy.

Read the poem, it’s not long. Then again. Remove the chicken from the oven when the timer buzzes. Set it to settle. Read the poem again. Those first nine lines in quotation marks – the poet’s speaking but to whom? He’s angry. At himself, it seems, and from the first line, not romantically, swashbucklingly angry, just plain, grumpy, foul-mood, grungy-laundry, prosaically displeased.

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published"I hate my verses, every line, every word.

This unappealing opening dares us to keep reading. Then in the second line, like a kite lofting, his muse begins to quiver in a poetic breeze. He apostrophizes his… pencils – well that’s a start:

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedOh pale and brittle pencils ever to tryOne grass-blade's curve

The double-weight of “try” – meaning test and attempt – elevates the rhetoric from humdrum to lyrical – so this is a poem, after all, and not just a growl.

The lyricism intensifies:

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedOne grass-blade's curve, or the throat of one birdThat clings to twig, ruffled against white sky.Oh cracked and twilight mirrors ever to catchOne color, one glintingHash, of the splendor of things.Unlucky hunter, Oh bullets of wax,The lion beauty, the wild-swan wings, the storm of the wings."

The cadences of ecstasy, these… cracked and twilight mirrors, bullets of wax, lion beauty. How often has the depicter of beauty been transported by their vision into visions, that sudden sense of the sublimity of things!

But now the poet catches himself – his language, face it, was getting florid – and starts talking turkey to himself, no longer histrionically aloud:

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published—This wild swan of a world is no hunter's game.Better bullets than yours would miss the white breastBetter mirrors than yours would crack in the flame.

Face it, fella – not a chance of painting your panting in mere refractory syllables, better folks have tried, a lot better. This is not a guy having a bad day, this is many a maker having a lousy life because it’s too hard to get their listeners (if they have any!) to feel what they’re feeling, too damn hard. Then our poet pops the question:

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedDoes it matter whether you hate your . . . self?

No words, however winning, are going to reconcile this guy to himself. He just isn’t up to the task he’s set – and will never be – he’s a loser – like any maker must be – who compares their piddling attempt to the immensity of their dream.

Ouch. And yet

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedAt least Love your eyes that can see, your mind that canHear the music, the thunder of the wings. Love the wild swan.

If you can’t love – or even forgive – yourself – the inevitable consequence of dreaming high – love the transmitters of these immense impressions – your eyes, mind, senses. Your groans are as nothing compared to the glory of being. Keep cursing your verses and brittle pencils if you must, but never quit trying. “Love the wild swan!” (exclamation point mine).

Supper time.

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Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedLove the Wild SwanRobinson Jeffers (1887-1962 )

"I hate my verses, every line, every word.Oh pale and brittle pencils ever to tryOne grass-blade's curve, or the throat of one birdThat clings to twig, ruffled against white sky.Oh cracked and twilight mirrors ever to catchOne color, one glintingHash, of the splendor of things.Unlucky hunter, Oh bullets of wax,The lion beauty, the wild-swan wings, the storm of the wings."—This wild swan of a world is no hunter's game.Better bullets than yours would miss the white breastBetter mirrors than yours would crack in the flame.Does it matter whether you hate your . . . self?At least Love your eyes that can see, your mind that canHear the music, the thunder of the wings. Love the wild swan.