The Selected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers

I was first introduced to Jeffers in college. I was no fan of poetry then, and was intimidated by his style of writing. I recently picked it up out of curiosity, and have since been a convert. His writing has awakened my own interest in his work, and poetry in general. From one casual reader to another, consider adding a little poetry to your reading list - and if you do, check out Robinson Jeffers. As another reviewer pointed out, this might be an under-represented collection of his works, so you may want to look around for a different volume. Better yet, look up some on the internet - he's dead, so its not like you are not stealing royalties from him.

Jeffers would not be surprised by the timeliness of his poetry as issues of globalization, war, terror, environmental carelessness, and hubris once again flood our daily lives. His poetry resonates with a distaste for the very "inhumanities"--though he would consider them wholly human--that have brought us to this state of the world. The endless cycle which he mentions so many time is repeating itself once again, and his wisdoms and voice are gathered into a wonderful collection of his finest poetry. One reading Jeffers in search of hope for humanity will be sorely disappointed, as his inhumanism is present on every page. It is not hopeless, however; the beauty of nature and the wild god of the world persist despite man's best efforts to tame and abolish them. Poems like "Vulture" are the only glimmer of hope that Jeffers has for mankind: recognize our place in the world and embrace it. That is the ultimate existence.

I was first introduced to the work of Robinson Jeffers in an essay by Edward Abbey in which he spoke about the stark unpretentious beauty of Jeffers' poem "Vulture" and from the moment I read it I have been a great fan ever since. Selected Poems, by Robinson Jeffers includes a great sampling of poems that spans Jeffers entire career, while also including the long poem Roan Stallion, which gives the reader a feel for Jeffers more ambitious longer works such as Cawdor, Tamar and Dear Judas.It seems that, while some bristle at what could be seen as Jeffers at times misanthropic themes, I believe it is precisely the stark objectivity in poems such as "Original Sin", "We are Those People" and "Vulture" that give his work such vitality and importance.Thus, what some erroneously perceive as Jeffers' misanthropy, can be better understood as a poet's attempt to bring about the realization of a biocentric view of the universe, which attempts to express the real indifference of Nature. In doing so, Jeffers re-integrates humanity into the natural world, in which every living being is subject to the constant cycles of life, death and rebirth, which is the ultimate law of Nature.Jeffers' work is not poetry merely for poetry's sake, which is all too often the case in the work produced today, it is Nature translated into the written word--a poetry of the Earth and a celebration of not only life, but also of the mountains, rivers, earth and sky, that provides shelter and nourishes us all.

First, you have to understand that I am a confirmed lover of Jeffers' poetry. Then you can understand why I have fallen back in love with this volume and recommend it as a great introduction.Although I had read a few of his poems in a college anthology, this volume introduced me to a more serious love of Jeffers back in the late '60s. I first saw it in the hip pocket of a young man with a backpack and ponytail when we met on a hiking trail in the Rockies. Like I suspect many others, that young man's enthusiasm got me to read Jeffers--from the same paperback--more seriously, and I became thoroughly infatuated with Jeffers long, mighty lines and stark but beautiful images.When I paid more attention to Jeffers, however, I no longer liked this anthology. It seemed shallow; the selections far from those I would have made myself. (Of course, those selections changed every few weeks.) Had I written a review during those years, I would have lamented the lack of the volume that has since been made available by Tim Hunt's excellent volume of selected works, and recommended this only because no other introduction was available. I was, I guess, a Jeffers snob.Now, however, I have a renewed appreciation for this volume. The essential poems are largely included, the shortest of Jeffers' long poems (the powerful and comparatively accessable "Roan Stallion") is included, and the size and price are unintimidating. I find myself happily purchasing copies to give as gifts to friends willing to gingerly give Jeffers a try, and it seldom fails to be appreciated at least somewhat. I own just about everything Jeffers wrote, yet this volume is still the one I take with me on airplanes. I am over my snob period, and love this volume again.If you don't know Jeffers, I recommend this volume highly as a great way to learn about a poet once considered America's best ever. (If you do know Jeffers, you don't need this review.)

Who was Robinson Jeffers? - A high priest of Nature? A proto-ecologist visionary? A lyric expounder of Fascism? An enemy of civilisation? An implacable misanthrope who spent his last years in his secluded lodging overlooking the Pacific, shunning what Edgar Allan Poe aptly referred to as "the tyranny of the human face"? His celebrations of war, his reverence for transhuman beauty, his dismissal of human egocentricity, and his pursuit of detachment and objectivity all suggest that he was either a befuddled hermit or an arch-hater of civilisation. Moreover, his fierce opposition to fanaticism and unfounded millennial hopes, his sanctification of greatness and his yearning to eradicate falsehoods and superstitions, - (such as human solipsism and anthropocentricsm) - and his registering of the urgings of religious awe tempt one to explain him away as a misanthrope. Both interpretations are wrong. Jeffers, a direct heir of the Transcendentalists Emerson, Thoreau and Whitman (he borrowed Whitman's long line, though failed to produce his sonic effects) stands as one of the finest poetic figures in neo-Romantic Modernism. His radical philosophy, which he called Inhumanism, is actually an attempt to totally think anew human conceptions regarding the nature and humanity, and is far too selective, complex, affirmative and far-reaching to be dismissed as simple misanthropy. It is for this reason that Jeffers's work has generated a vortex of academic dissent. The adage that "all great religions began as heresies" may receive sufficient demonstration in Jeffers' future critical reception. In this connection, it may be tempting to see Jeffers as another Prometheus, a seeker and bringer of Truth and Fire. His Inhumanism is a bold and powerful attempt to ennoble humanity through greater knowledge and self-scrutiny.