Wonderful post. I appreciate how Jeffers provides a striking, dark contrast to the glorious nature poetry of someone like Gerard Manley Hopkins. So different, and yet both so resonant.
Thanks! I agree. Just the other day, in my Philosophy of Art and Beauty class, I read both Hopkins' "As kingfishers catch fire" and then, right after that, Jeffers' "Birds and Fishes." The two provide exactly that contrast you describe, with the ascent to the divine (conceived of rather differently) at the end of each. Both visions, I think, are necessary in order to perceive nature accurately, and to perceive God made manifest in nature.
Wonderful post. I appreciate how Jeffers provides a striking, dark contrast to the glorious nature poetry of someone like Gerard Manley Hopkins. So different, and yet both so resonant.
Thanks! I agree. Just the other day, in my Philosophy of Art and Beauty class, I read both Hopkins' "As kingfishers catch fire" and then, right after that, Jeffers' "Birds and Fishes." The two provide exactly that contrast you describe, with the ascent to the divine (conceived of rather differently) at the end of each. Both visions, I think, are necessary in order to perceive nature accurately, and to perceive God made manifest in nature.