Word: hungerfield
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...HUNGERFIELD AND OTHER POEMS, by Robinson Jeffers, remained true to the pessimism and clear distaste for humanity that has long been Jeffers' trademark; it also included some ringing tributes to nature, was stamped with a character as firm as the boulders Jeffers admires...
...HUNGERFIELD AND OTHER POEMS (115 pp.)-Robinson Jeffers-Random House...
...moves among death, violence and pessimism as naturally as other poets celebrate love and ecstasy. In Hungerfield, the title poem addressed to his wife, Hawl Hungerfield's mother lies in a California ranch house dying of cancer. Big, powerful Hawl sits beside her waiting for Death to claim her so that he can grapple with him and beat him off, as Hawl did once in World War I when badly wounded. Death enters and Hungerfield does beat him off, but the reprieved woman, who has been begging for Death, is displeased. Vengefully she accuses Hawl's wife...
...drowned, kills his brother for failing to save them, then burns the house down over them all. To his mother, who says, "Hawl . . . kill me before I burn," he replies: "Find a knife for yourself." With obvious Jeffersian irony, the poet allows her to escape and live. Hungerfield hardly proves a favorite Jeffers point-"There is no consolation in humanity"-but he avoids satisfactory motivations for his piled-up horrors by intoning: It is thus (and will be} that violence Turns on itself, and builds on the wreck of violence its violent beauty, the spring fire-fountain And final...
...most people, will find little comfort anywhere in Jeffers' work. Even now, an only slightly mellowed grandfather, he holds unshaken to his own credo. Never has he stated the essence of it more clearly than he does now in The Old Stonemason, one of the short poems in Hungerfield...
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