Mortal Limit (1985). Content and Description

“Mortal Limit” first appeared in Altitudes and Extension: 1980-1984, a collection of new poems included in the anthology New and Selected Poems: 1923-1985. Were it not for its long lines, “Mortal Limit” would be a textbook example of a Shakespearean sonnet: It consists of three quatrains and a concluding couplet with a rhyme scheme of abab cdcd efef gg. In the poem an unnamed speaker watches a hawk disappear above Wyoming’s Teton mountain range.

The speaker contemplates what effect the hawk’s high altitude has on its perception, wondering whether upon “tasting that atmosphere’s thinness” it will “Hang motionless in dying vision before / It knows it will accept the mortal limit” (3.1-3). Having reached this tenuous insight, the speaker seems on the edge of a breakthrough in understanding the hawk. The vision remains incomplete; however, the line ends abruptly, and the brief final stanza consists of four attempts to finish the thought, none of which seems to satisfy the speaker.

The first stanza describes the hawk’s mystical ascent. The hawk reaches into a sublime space, one where transcendence appears on the horizon. Yet Warren does not allow the speaker access to what lies beyond. Instead, the speaker must imagine the hawk’s vantage point, which, while encompassing the unknown, is still constrained by its limits: its ability to fly and the constant pull of gravity.

In this way the hawk may be seen to represent the human condition and the imagination, the facility with which human beings contemplate their limits in the field of time and endeavor to express what language cannot capture. Thus, the poem deals with poetry’s possibilities and limits, its potential and ultimate inefficacy.

Poetic language functions in the poem as a vehicle that helps us approach physical, sensory experiences other than our own. Though the speaker does not directly experience the hawk’s heightened perception, he can imagine the hawk’s view through language, as in the question that concludes the second stanza: “Beyond what range will gold eyes see / New ranges rise to mark a last scrawl of light?” (2.3-4).

Despite this capability, however, poetic language appears incapable of describing what lies beyond the “mortal limit” of death, a failure manifested in the poem’s form by the break between the third and fourth stanzas. The grand unifying vision promised in line 12 remains incomplete; death lies beyond our ability to grasp or articulate, transcending poetic expression.

For Discussion or Writing:
1. Compare and contrast “Mortal Limit” with “Evening Hawk,” another poem by Warren that details the flight of a hawk. In what ways is the hawk’s heightened physical perception linked with the two poems’ poetic and philosophical insights?

2. Both William Butler Yeats in his poem “The Second Coming” and Warren in “Mortal Limit” use gyrating images. Compare and contrast the ways that both authors deal with spiraling movement and the significance this movement has for the works. Also consider the Rainer Maria Rilke poem “I live my life in growing orbits,” which uses similar images. Why do all three employ dizzying.

Works Cited and Additional Resources:
Bedient, Calvin. In the Heart’s Last Kingdom: Robert Penn Warren’s Major Poetry. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1984.

Bloom, Harold, ed. Modern Critical Views: Robert Penn Warren. New York: Chelsea House, 1986. Blotner, Joseph. Robert Penn Warren. New York: Random House, 1997.

Bohner, Charles. RobertPenn Warren. Boston: Twayne, 1981.
Brosi, George. “Robert Penn Warren.” KYLit—a Site Devoted to Kentucky Writers. October 5, 1997. Department of English and Theatre. Available online. URL: http://www.english.eku.edu/SERVICES/ KYLIT/WARREN.HTM. Accessed July 16, 2006.

Chambers, Robert H., ed. Twentieth Century Interpretations of All the King’s Men: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1977.
Corrigan, Lesa Carnes. Poems of Pure Imagination: Robert Penn Warren and the Romantic Tradition. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1999.