Too many of Jeffers’ poems end in a tidy pronouncement that seems to betray a lack of confidence in the reader—or conversely, a lack of confidence in the poet. Dawn (CP 3:211) is not one of those poems. Like Apology for Bad Dreams, Dawn ends with a grand image. In the former case, the image was one of multifarious beauty. In the case of Dawn the ending is an eruption of grotesque cruelty. This is perhaps not a poem that one would want to take home to mother, but I find it beautiful — beautifully troubling.

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Dawn has not yet been anthologized.