Biography (from Norton Anthology of Poetry)
(John) Robinson Jeffers was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
He was educated at Occidental College. Before turning to writing,
he studied medicine and forestry at the graduate level. In 1914
he moved to Carmel, California, where he lived in relative
isolation -- in a home overlooking the dramatic Pacific coastline
that figures prominently in his work. Jeffers' philosophical stance,
which he dubbed "inhumanism" and defined as "a shifting emphasis and
significance from man to not-man," led many critics to label him a
misanthrope. However, his intent was to challenge humanity's over-
reliance on the flawed social structures of its own making and to
urge its return to a more primal relation with the natural world.
There is a dynamic tension in Jeffers' work between violent energy
and quiet endurance, symbolized as hawk and rock. Often expansive
and rhetorical, his poems employ a line adapted, in part, from
Walt Whitman's lines, and distinguish themselves clearly from the
compact symbolist and spare imagist poems prevalent early in the
century.
My Brief Note on Jeffers
Robinson Jeffers was very popular during the 20s and 30s, in whose poetry
the reader would find human unimportant. To the poet, human was equal to
any other entity in Nature, such as the hawks or the rocks. The poet's
emphasis on "inhumanism," re-defining the position of human in the world, drew
a lot of attention and became critical study material for ecopoetry. When
the World War II broke out, however, the poet's indifference to human matters
caused his fame to ebb. Additionally, because he kept repeating the same theme
in his poems, many critics, thinking he was lacking more original insight,
found his works uninteresting and turned to other fields. Although it is true
that Jeffers keeps playing the same trick and his didatic style often wears
the reader out, his candid, and detached voice is invaluable among the
usually obscure modern poets.
Recommended Readings
"Shine, Perishing Republic"
"The Purse-Seine"
"Hands"
"The Eye"
"To the Stone-Cutters"
"Vulture"
"For Una"
"The Place for No Story"
"Rock and Hawk"
"Watch the Lights Fade"
"Cassandra"
"Carmel Point"
"The Great Explosion"
Note: These poems are only a small part of Jeffers's writings.
I pick the poems according to my personal preference,
and deliberately avoid some long narratives, whose theme is
actually covered by the shorter ones. One's understanding to
Jeffers shall never be limited to this list.
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For those who are interested in English poetry:
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Maybe you will find something interesting.
Welcome any discussion on writing.
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