SOURCE: "Obstinate Humanity," in Proofs & Theories: Essays on Poetry, The Ecco Press, 1994, pp. 65-71.

In the following excerpt, Gliick discusses Hass's work in relation to that of Robinson Jeffers and Czeslaw Milosz.

Robinson Jeffers appears to be a poet other poets chastize eloquently. That is: the inducement to literary reprimand is in proportion to the stakes: the grander, the more fundamental the objection, the more inviting the project. The remarkable poems of this little genre, Milosz's and Hass's, are devoid of flamboyant condescension, at least insofar as the living can avoid flaunting their ongoing development at the immobile dead. "So brave in a void / you offered sacrifices to demons": so Milosz addresses Jeffers. If not exactly tribute, this is nevertheless a particular species of reproach: giant to giant.

The reprimand is moral: at issue is humanity, the definition thereof. And Jeffers' crime, in Milosz's poem, "to proclaim … an...