(In 1938 Random House published The Selected Poetry of Rob...)
In 1938 Random House published The Selected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers, a volume that would remain in print for more than fifty years. For decades it drew enough poets, students, and general readers to keep Jeffers―in spite of the almost total academic neglect that followed his fame in the 1920s and 1930s―a force in American poetry. Now scholars are at last beginning to recognize that he created a significant alternative to the High Modernism of Pound, Eliot, and Stevens. Similarly, contemporary poets who have returned to the narrative poem acknowledge Jeffers to be a major poet, while those exploring California and the American West as literary regions have found in him a foundational figure. Moreover, Jeffers stands as a crucial precursor to contemporary attempts to rethink our practical, ethical, and spiritual obligations to the natural world and the environment. These developments underscore the need for a new selected edition that would, like the 1938 volume, include the long narratives that were to Jeffers his major work, along with the more easily anthologized shorter poems. This new selected edition differs from its predecessor in several ways. When Jeffers shaped the 1938 Selected Poetry, he drew from his most productive period (1917-37), but his career was not over yet. In the quarter century that followed, four more volumes of his poetry were published. This new selected edition draws from these later volumes, and it includes a sampling of the poems Jeffers left unpublished, along with several prose pieces in which he reflects on his poetry and poetics. This edition also adopts the texts of the recently completed The Collected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers (five volumes, Stanford, 1988-2000). When the poems were originally published, copy editors and typesetters adjusted Jeffers's punctuation, often obscuring the rhythm and pacing of what he actually wrote, and at points even obscuring meaning and nuance. This new selected edition, then, is a much broader, more accurate representation of Jeffers's career than the previous Selected Poetry. Reviews of volumes in The Collected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers "A masterful job of contemporary scholarly editing, this book begins an edition intended to clarify a 'Jeffers canon,' establishing for times to come the verse legacy of a poet who looked on all things with the eyes of eternity."―San Francisco Chronicle "This edition will be standard . . . a tribute and justice to a poet whose independent strength has survived to challenge personal and public canons."―Virginia Quarterly Review "Jeffers is the last of the major poets of his generation―Frost, Stevens, Williams, Pound, Moore, Eliot―to get his collected poems. Now that the job is at hand, it is done very well. . . . Tim Hunt has been painstaking in his editorial preparation and judicious in his presentation. . . . A great poet is ready for his due."―Philadelphia Inquirer "Few American poets are treated as well by publishers as Jeffers is by Stanford University Press. . . . These poems represent a distinctive voice in the American canon, and it is good to have them so wonderfully set forth."―Christian Century
(Robinson Jeffers was one of the most controversial poets ...)
Robinson Jeffers was one of the most controversial poets of the twentieth century. In this volume, essential poems selected from his major works provide an excellent overview of Jeffers's style and the themes present throughout his work. Drawn from volumes published throughout his career, , among them Be Angry at the Sun; Hungerfield; The Double Axe; Roan Stallion; Tamar and Other Poems; as well as The Beginning and the End, which contains his last poems, these poems will introduce new readers to his inimitable voice, while also gathering in one place some of his best work for his confirmed fans.
The Beginning and the End: And Other Poems (Classic Reprint)
(Excerpt from The Beginning and the End: And Other Poems
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Excerpt from The Beginning and the End: And Other Poems
And no doubt it will burst again: diastole and systole the Whole universe beats like a heart.
Peace in our time was never one of God's promises; but back and forth, die and live, burn and be damned, The great heart beating, pumping into our arteries His terrible life.
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Cawdor and Medea: A Long Poem After Euripides a New Directions Book
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Here for a new generation of readers and students are t...)
Here for a new generation of readers and students are two major poetic works of Robinson Jeffers (1887-1962).
The verse narrative Cawdor, set on the ruthless California coast which Jeffers knew so well, tells a simple tale: an aging widower, Cawdor, unwilling to relinquish his youth, knowingly marries a young girl who does not love him. She falls in love with his son, Hood, and the narrative unfolds in tragedy of immense proportions.
Medea is a verse adaptation of Euripides' drama and was created especially for the actress Judith Anderson. Their combined genius made the play one of the outstanding successes of the 1940s. In Medea, Jeffers relentlessly drove toward what Ralph Waldo Emerson had called "the proper tragic element"―terror.
John Robinson Jeffers was an American poet and environmentalist.
Background
Jeffers was born on January 10, 1887, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the son of the Reverend Dr. William Hamilton Jeffers and Annie Robinson Tuttle. The Reverend Dr. Jeffers was a Presbyterian minister who, at the time of his son's birth, held the chair of Old Testament Literature and Exegesis at Western Theological Seminary.
Education
Jeffers received his first training in languages, principally Latin, from his father, who rewarded each accomplishment with a heavier work load. Soon, however, the youth was attending private schools in Europe and in America, changing schools frequently at his parents' whim. By the age of twelve, he had mastered Latin, could read Greek, and could speak French and German fluently. Jeffers entered the University of Western Pennsylvania in 1902 but transferred to Occidental College when his family moved to California in 1903. He completed his B. A. at Occidental in 1905 and enrolled in the University of Southern California that fall to do graduate work in literature.
After a year's study, he spent a summer with his family in Switzerland and took courses at the University of Zurich. Abandoning the formal study of literature, Jeffers enrolled in 1907 at the University of Southern California Medical School, remaining there through the summer of 1910. He then studied forestry at the University of Washington from the fall of 1910 through the following spring. Jeffers was already writing verse at the age of eleven. In college and graduate school he contributed regularly to student publications and wrote poems for women.
Career
In 1912 Jeffers used part of a $9, 500 legacy to publish his first book, Flagons and Apples. The poems were traditional in form and conception, as were those in the commercially published Californians (1916). Neither book occasioned any literary stir. The issues involved in the entrance of the United States into World War I, the birth of the twins, and the construction of Tor House, the home he built on the rugged slopes outside Carmel, California, all affected Jeffers' poetic vision. His third book, Tamar and Other Poems (1924), contained work even the poet himself called "singular. " Critics praised it in newspapers and magazines with national audiences. When the privately printed edition was exhausted, Boni and Liveright brought out Roan Stallion, Tamar and Other Poems (1925) to the accompaniment of critical predictions that Jeffers would be one of the greatest poets of the age.
Jeffers' The Women at Point Sur (1927) caused some critical retrenchment. The poem was long and, in spite of its violence, dull. Cawdor and Other Poems (1928) and Dear Judas and Other Poems (1929) were, however, highly praised, although orthodox Christians objected to Dear Judas's presentation of Christ as a traitor who misled men into seeking love rather than annihilation. Thurso's Landing and Other Poems (1932) and Give Your Heart to the Hawks and Other Poems (1933) gave further boosts to Jeffers' poetic stature. Subsequent volumes, Solstice and Other Poems (1935), Such Counsels You Gave to Me (1937), and Be Angry at the Sun (1941), lacked the verve and excitement of the earlier work. Jeffers became bored with his writing, and when he began to write about his boredom, his critical reputation faltered. His popular reputation remained strong, however. The publication of The Selected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers (1938) and a triumphal reading tour of eastern colleges and universities in 1941 attest to the fact.
Jeffers' reputation waned in the mid-1940's, as he continued to preach the wisdom of isolationism, which he had advocated in the 1930's. During World War II that idea lost its popular appeal; to many Americans it seemed almost treasonous. When The Double Axe and Other Poems (1948) was published, the United States was still awash in the feelings engendered by the war, and the publisher, Random House, included a prefatory note denouncing Jeffers' political views. Although the book was not well received, the reception was not entirely the result of Jeffers' politics. The poems were not considered to be among his best. Reviews of Jeffers' Medea (1946), an adaptation of Euripides' play, were mixed, but a stage version ran for the full 1947-1948 season on Broadway, with Judith Anderson in the title role. Two other Jeffers dramatic poems were produced as plays in New York, Dear Judas in 1947 and The Tower Beyond Tragedy in 1950. Neither enjoyed the success of Medea. Jeffers' last volume of poetry, Hungerfield and Other Poems (1954), contained, in the title work, a kind of dedication to the memory of Una Jeffers, who had died in 1950. Thereafter he wrote little.
In his last years his reputation recovered somewhat from the slump it had suffered following World War II. He died at his home near Carmel, California, on January 20, 1962.
(Robinson Jeffers was one of the most controversial poets ...)
Views
In his long narratives and short, philosophical verses Jeffers revealed an unusual stance toward humanity. Man, he seemed to declare, is not the center of the universe. His philosophy, labeled inhumanism, has been seen as an extension of the ideas of Nietzsche and Spengler. Jeffers saw civilization toppling and the human race moving toward annihilation. The world, he maintained, would be better off if these things did happen.
Connections
At the University of Southern California, Jeffers had met Una Lindsay Call Kuster, the wife of a prominent attorney. Their casual friendship grew into a love that both felt was unwise to pursue. Jeffers' move to Washington and his accompanying change of professional plans came, in part, from an effort to end the relationship. Neither this effort nor a trip Una took alone to Europe worked. She sought a divorce, and in August 1913 she and Jeffers were married. They had three children; a girl who died in infancy and twin boys.