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"The Black Vulture" is a sonnet by American poet George Sterling first printed in March 1910. The poem was cited by Thomas E. Benediktsson in his book George Sterling as "a sonnet which became Sterling’s most consistently praised and most anthologized poem." Poet and critic William Rose Benét wrote: “As for ‘The Black Vulture,’ I think it is one of the finest sonnets in the language.” The New York Times said: “No finer sonnet has been written for many a day.” In American Literature, professor Robert G. Berkelman called it “one of Sterling’s most enduring achievements and certainly among the memorable sonnets in our literature.” After the poem’s first book publication in 1911, reprints of “The Black Vulture” in newspapers, magazines, and books have kept it almost continually in print for more than a hundred years. Creation of the poem “The Black Vulture” is a Petrarchan sonnet of fourteen iambic pentameter lines. George Sterling seems to have first titled his poem "The Californian Condor." He sold his sonnet to Sunset magazine, which printed it as "The Condor" in its March 1910 issue, six years and three months after the Wright Brothers’ first flight. The magazine put a color painting on its front cover of Sterling piloting a biplane (which in real life the poet never did) while wearing a red necktie (which the poet did do, and which in those days proclaimed the wearer to be a socialist). "The Condor" was reprinted by the Sapulpa [Oklahoma] Sunday Light.Next Sterling changed his poem's first line from "A mote upon the day’s immeasured dome" to "Aloof within the day’s immeasured dome," made three other small changes, and retitled his poem "The Black Vulture." He included it in his 1911 poetry collection The House of Orchids and Other Poems. Sterling later changed his first line's "immeasured" to "enormous," resulting in three slightly different versions of "The Black Vulture." His final revision is the version provided here. Text of the poem Interpretations What is “The Black Vulture” about? The cover-assigning Sunset editor and the New York Times Book Review editor seemed to agree that the poem celebrates aviation. The Times editor wrote that people had written many poems about aviation, “but we have not happened to see any other poem, having this new art or science as its theme, in which the subject is treated with so much imagination and such literary skill as have gone to the making of “The Black Vulture.”Many readers drew other conclusions. Like all of Sterling’s 500-plus sonnets, “The Black Vulture” has a first section about one topic and a second section about a related second topic. Some readers of this poem felt the first section shows nature from the soaring predator’s lofty point of view, while the second section regrets people trespassing in nature. Other readers arrived at other interpretations. High school seniors given “The Black Vulture” described a variety of points of view. One concluded: “While he is sitting on top of the world, he is not concerned with the affairs of the people beneath him.” A second senior wrote: “Worldly heights and worldly storms are nothing, and human endeavors are controlled by a black vulture—Fate.” Another elaborated: “The solitary vulture looks down from his high home on the life below him, and he thinks of man least of all though it is man who plans to execute his own dream by sharing the high dominion with the vulture.” Another said he or she thought: “From his position in the sky, the Black Vulture looks down upon the other mighty birds, the sunset, and the mountains. He looks with contempt on man and man’s dreams. This vulture, or Death, little realizes that men in their adventures have no fear of him.”That the black vulture was Death and the poem expresses mankind’s quest to avoid it has been the view of several readers, including leading historian-critic of fantasy and horror literature S. T. Joshi, who called "The Black Vulture": "a grim portrayal of the all-destroying power of Death." One college student’s vehement insistence on the “Death interpretation” drove his English professor to ask Sterling what this poem means. Sterling replied: “The Black Vulture” is a nature-poem pure and simple. There are few poems into which some kind of symbolism cannot be read, with a little imagination—and a good many where symbolism was intended. But I am not guilty in this case.   The folk of the Santa Lucia mountains call our California condor “the black vulture,” and once, when on the Big Sur river, I saw one of the great birds poised a mile or more overhead. They are larger even than the Andean condor, their wings spreading over ten feet in some specimens. It’s a fine of $1000. for shooting one, as the bird is very scarce and becoming rarer yearly. I doubt if there are 20 in all California. They range from the Big Sur (a mere stream) southward into Mexico. Critical response The poem's reputation mushroomed in 1911, when a New York Times editor saw "The Black Vulture" in Sterling's book The House of Orchids and Other Poems and was impressed. He placed the poem as the New York Times Review of Books front cover's lead item and praised the sonnet as showing "much imagination and literary skill." Weeks later, the New York Times Review of Books printed "The Black Vulture" again, this time with its review of The House of Orchids and Other Poems, stating, "No finer sonnet has been written for many a day."After the New York Times highlighted “The Black Vulture,” dozens of newspapers around the country reprinted it—even one in England. Almost half the papers also reprinted the Times’ praise of the poem. In other publications’ reviews of The House of Orchids and Other Poems, some reviewers singled out “The Black Vulture.” Poet Joyce Kilmer, in Literary Digest, decided: “By writing ‘[A] Wine of Wizardry’ and ‘The Black Vulture,’ George Sterling earned the gratitude of all lovers of poetry."In 1917, the Book Club of California asked Sterling to select out of all his sonnets his favorite thirty-five to include in an artistically designed, limited edition book, Thirty-Five Sonnets. Sterling chose "The Black Vulture" as one of his favorites. Six years later, Sterling again chose "The Black Vulture" when New York publishing firm Henry Holt and Company asked Sterling to choose from all the poems he’d written in his first 25 years as a poet to form a collection of his Selected Poems. Reviewing that book in the New York Post, poet and critic William Rose Benét wrote: “As for ‘The Black Vulture,’ I think it is one of the finest sonnets in the language.” Poet Robinson Jeffers encountered the poem in a poetry anthology and wrote to Sterling: “Your ‘Black Vulture’ stood out in it like a mountain peak.”American poet Leslie Nelson Jennings, called by critic Stephen Philips "perhaps the most versatile and splendid maker of sonnets America has produced," wrote the sonnet "Condor" as a companion poem to Sterling's, even echoing the description "mote" S.... Discover the Rosa Mary Redding Mikels popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Rosa Mary Redding Mikels books.