California's Grandest Poem

This may not be acceptable in the post-postmodern era, which came on the heels of deconstruction, but we once thought that the most profound poem written in California had emerged from the pencil of Gelette Burgess, who lived in a shack on top of Russian Hill. Nearly every Native Son could recite his poem from memory. Later poets like Robinson Jeffers and Gary Snyder had the uncommon advantage of standing on the shoulders of a giant in the field of American literature. Jeffers and Snyder became known to a grateful readership, but they no longer manufacture the fellow who can write like this:

I never saw a purple cow,
I never hope to see one;
But I can tell you anyhow,
I'd rather see than be one.