Robinson Jeffers

Poet

• Born: January 10, 1887
• Birthplace: Allegheny (now in Pittsburgh), Pennsylvania
• Died: January 20, 1962
• Place of death: Carmel, California

American poet

Biography

Born in 1887, John Robinson Jeffers spent a great deal of his childhood traveling about Europe with his parents. Some of their stops included Zurich, where he went to kindergarten, London, and Edinburgh. At the age of fifteen, he returned to the United States; the next year his family moved to California, the region Jeffers later chose as the background of his poetry. At eighteen he graduated from Occidental College in Los Angeles. After that, according to Jeffers’s account, came desultory years at the University of Southern California (USC), the University of Zurich, the USC Medical School, and the University of Washington, all with faint interest. As he stated, “I wasn’t deeply interested in anything but poetry.”

In 1912, he published Flagons and Apples, a volume that contained little hint of his later distinctive and powerful style. The next year he married Una Call Kuster, and the following summer they planned a trip to England. World War I broke out, however, so they turned back to the village of Carmel, on the California coast. The country around Carmel Bay, wild and rugged, possessed a beauty that appealed to Jeffers. It was there that he built a stone house (Tor House) and, with his own hands, an observation tower. They lived there in virtual seclusion.

After Californians, Jeffers brought out in 1924 the book that brought him fame, Tamar, and Other Poems. The volumes came swiftly afterward: Roan Stallion, Tamar, and Other Poems; The Women at Point Sur; Cawdor, and Other Poems; Dear Judas, and Other Poems; Thurso’s Landing, and Other Poems; Give Your Heart to the Hawks, and Other Poems, and others. At first, the philosophy that emerges from Jeffers’s violent and tragic narrative poems and from his lyrics seems unrewardingly bleak: Humankind is introverted, cruel, and at best only a blundering step toward some higher form of life. However, Jeffers reveals the beauty of permanence in rocks, sea, and sky. In 1938, The Selected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers appeared; in it the poet displays his rugged power and his inconsistencies of outlook. Many critics feel that Jeffers’s primary contribution to poetry lies in the cut-from-stone beauty of his lyrics rather than in the narratives that heap the horror and violence too high.

Dramatic success came to Jeffers late in his career with the Broadway production of his verse dramaMedea in 1947. Judith Anderson gave a sensational performance in this play, a free adaptation from the Greek. He followed Medea with a revival in 1950 of his earlier play, The Tower Beyond Tragedy, first printed in Roan Stallion, Tamar, and Other Poems. In The Double Axe, and Other Poems and Hungerfield, and Other Poems, some readers have detected a declining power in Jeffers’s work.

Jeffers has perhaps never been accorded the prominence he deserves, but since the 1960’s his indictment of humanity’s egocentrism and his insistence that humans should be a part of nature, rather than its masters and despoilers, have earned for him an honored place among environmentalists.

Bibliography

Brophy, Robert J. Robinson Jeffers: Myth, Ritual, and Symbol in His Narrative Poems. Reprint. Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1976. This basic study, often referred to by critics, thoroughly establishes the grounding of Jeffers’s narrative works in—among others—Judeo-Christian, Greek, Norse, and Hindu mythologies. Contains illustrations, an index, notes, and a bibliography.

Brophy, Robert J, ed. The Robinson Jeffers Newsletter: A Jubilee Gathering, 1962-1988. Los Angeles: Occidental College, 1988. A collection of the best articles from the first twenty-five years of the journal devoted to the poet and his works. Includes illustrations.

Everson, William. The Excesses of God: Robinson Jeffers as a Religious Figure. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1988. The author, himself a poet, sees Jeffers as a bardic and prophetic man and relates him to the thought of such modern theologians as Mircea Eliade. Contains notes and an index. Everson is also the author, under his previous pen name of Brother Antoninus, of an earlier study on the same subject, Robinson Jeffers: Fragments of an Older Fury (1968).

Karman, James. Robinson Jeffers: Poet of California. Brownsville, Oreg.: Story Line Press, 1995. A revised and expanded edition of Karman’s critical biography, which gives insight into the life of Jeffers, his family, and the honor he gave to hard work, self-reliance, and conservation of the environment.

Nolte, William H. Rock and Hawk: Robinson Jeffers and the Romantic Agony. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1978. Relates Jeffers to the traditions of European, English, and American Romantic philosophy and poetry. Includes notes and an index.

Thesing, William B. Robinson Jeffers and a Galaxy of Writers. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1995. A collection of critical essays by various authors dealing with Jeffers’s life and work. Includes bibliographical references and index.

Vardamis, Alex A. The Critical Reputation of Robinson Jeffers: A Bibliographical Study. Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1972. A chronological annotated bibliography of all the books, articles, and reviews about Jeffers from the beginning of his career to 1971. Contains a critical introduction.

Zaller, Robert. The Cliffs of Solitude: A Reading of Robinson Jeffers. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983. An interpretation of Jeffers’s entire career, with particular emphasis on the long narratives. Combines the psychoanalytic and mythic viewpoints. Contains chronology, index, notes, and bibliography.