A Note on the Text of “Strange Hunting”

Terry Beers

Volume 3, Number 3c

1.  Although Walter Van Tilburg Clark did not publish “Strange Hunting” during his lifetime, two slightly variant versions of “Strange Hunting” have been printed posthumously. The first appeared in the South Dakota Review (11.3 [1973]: 7–22); the second appeared as a fine-press limited edition of one hundred      and fifteen copies published by the Black Rock Press in 1985. Though both of these previous printings have been consulted during the preparation of this text, the version that appears in Jeffers Studies is based on the typescript of the poem held by the Special Collections Department, University of Nevada-Reno Library (Clark, Walter Van Tilburg Papers, NC 527).
In a preface to the Black Rock printing, son Robert Clark speaks of two unpublished versions of the poem, a manuscript in a notebook labelled “Occasionals II” and the typescript copy consulted for this printing. The typescript is a second, slightly variant version, “suggesting,” says Robert Clark, that the author “. . . thought it good enough at the time to send it out for possible publication.” If this was the case, the typescript would seem the best representation of Walter Clark’s intentions for the poem.

2.  The typescript is in small ways different from both printed versions. The SDR printing comes closest, showing little use of hyphenation. For example, apparent compounds like “serpent like” do not appear with hyphens, though in the Black Rock Press version, hyphens have been inserted, yielding, in this example, “serpent-like.” For this printing, we have followed convention (and the Black Rock Press) and also inserted hyphens where they would ordinarily appear. We have also regularized some spellings. Clark’s typescript shows “dessicated” for desiccated, “gutteral” for guttural, “insistant” for insistent, “gulley” for gully, and “carromed” for caromed. Probably Clark himself or an editor would have made these corrections if the poem would have been prepared for publication. In addition, the typescript shows (aside from minor corrections of typographical errors) three occasions where significant hand corrections appear, lining out some words and phrases and substituting others. The Black Rock Press does not insert the corrections on two occasions; the SDR version includes all three, as does the printing here.

The editors of Jeffers Studies are grateful to Robert M. Clark and the Estate of Walter Van Tilburg Clark, and to Robert E. Blesse and Special Collections, University of Nevada-Reno Library, for their kind permission to publish “Strange Hunting.”