For the most part, Robinson Jeffers’ revisions of his shorter poems are limited to minor refinements of phrasing and punctuation. “Salmon Fishing” is one of the few instances (especially from this period) where a more elaborate impacts not simply the execution of the poem but the conception of it.
Jeffers probably wrote “Salmon Fishing” December 1920 as he was shaping the approach to Nature that would be the basis of his mature work. The first of the versions below was for the second construction of the unpublished collection typically referred to as Brides of the South Wind, and it is probably very close to the poem as Jeffers first drafted it. The second version below is the poem as Jeffers reworked it, probably in 1923 after he had drafted the narrative “Tamar” as he was preparing Tamar and Other Poems for publication.
SALMON-FISHING [BSW.2 ts.]
Autumn and evening rains make the earth young-blooded,
The southwind shouts to the rivers,
The rivers open their mouths and the salt salmon
Nose up into the rapids;
In Christmas month against the smoulder and menace
Of a long angry sundown,
Red ash of the dark solstice, I have seen the anglers
On the rocks and in red shallows
Reel out their lines to torture, silent men
Playing the three-foot steelheads,
And land their living bullion, the bloody mouths
And scales full of the sunset
Twitch on the rocks, no more to wander at will
The wild Pacific pasture, nor wanton and spawning
Race up into fresh water.
SALMON FISHING [Tamar & Other Poems]
The days shorten, the south blows wide for showers now,
The south wind shouts to the rivers,
The rivers open their mouths and the salt salmon
Race up into the freshet.
In Christmas month against the smoulder and menace
Of a long angry sundown,
Red ash of the dark solstice, you see the anglers,
Pitiful, cruel, primeval,
Like the priests of the people that built Stonehenge,
Dark silent forms, performing
Remote solemnities in the red shallows
Of the river’s mouth at the year’s turn,
Drawing landward their live bullion, the bloody mouths
And scales full of the sunset
Twitch on the rocks, no more to wander at will
The wild Pacific pasture nor wanton and spawning
Race up into fresh water.