Robinson Jeffers (1887–1962)

Robinson Jeffers died over sixty years ago, but his poems speak to our time. In one poem, “Prescription of Painful Ends,” he evokes the image of an exhausted horse that stumbles but manages to right itself (for him, the two world wars in his lifetime). The horse continues, but it is only a matter of time before it falls.
And from Jeffers’s perspective, it’s not such a bad thing for human civilization to end. When he writes in another poem, “Carmel Point,” “we must uncenter our minds from ourselves,” it is not in the hope that we can avert the doom of mankind by recognizing that we are part of nature and not its master, but simply to reconcile ourselves with our transience.
Does this sound bitter? Oddly enough, to me, it didn’t. Throughout this collection, Jeffers conveys the peace he finds at Big Sur, contemplating the (relative) permanence of granite cliff and ocean tide.… (more)

Robinson Jeffers was born on January 10, 1887. One of his most famous poems and one of my favorites is "Rock and Hawk" and it was used as the title for a selection of his shorter poems edited by the poet Robert Haas in 1987. The collection spans Jeffers' output of poems from the twenties through the sixties. The themes that spurred his seeking mind include nature as in these lines from "Natural Music":
"The old voice of the ocean, the bird-chatter of little rivers,
(Winter has given them gold for silver
To stain their water and bladed green for brown to line their
banks)
But he also was influenced by his reading of Nietzsche as evidenced by these thoughts in "Roan Stallion":
"Humanity is the start of
the race: I say
Humanity is the mold to break away from, the crust to break
through, the coal to break into fire,
The atom to be split."
The Jeffers that I like the most has a transcendental quality that reminds one of Thoreau or Emerson, but imbues nature with a modern patina that make its spiritual quality seem new. Many of the poems also suggest the beauty, the solitude, and the grandeur of the home Jeffers made in Carmel. While his musings can sometimes be dark and brooding they also reflect the mind of a truly great American poet.… (more)

Certainly not my cup of tea and most likely another reason I could give for the general mass of humanity taught at all ages through their schooling experience to not like poetry either. I am sure there are some redeeming qualities of Jeffers' poetry to the historians among us, but that is something I am simply not interested in. Having cultural, civic, and worldly events chronicled through narrative poetry is a media that quickly puts me to sleep and I find no pleasantries in it. My body almost dies, actually. I am grateful, however, for the followers and fans Robinson Jeffers has had and still has and that he somehow offers substance and delight to these precious few. But I will not be one included as an honorary member of that group and neither one of his loyal acolytes.… (more)