Robinson Jeffers may be the most underrated major American poet of the 20^th Century. He has certainly been relegated to an obscurity he does not deserve. The philosophy expressed by his poetry is bleak, true, but his language is powerful, the images he creates are both striking and enduring, his characters are unforgettable, and his passion is unmistakable. And, above all, his mastery of the language and the forms of poetry is little short of awesome.

Jeffers was an ardent isolationist when being an isolationist wasn’t cool, and he expressed his political views in pointed and brilliant and short poems such as “Be Angry at the Sun” and “Shine, Perishing Republic.” He didn’t appear to care much for humankind, although he certainly found certain individuals tolerable. (He was, after all, married with children, and his love for them all shines throughout his oeuvre.) His supposed misanthropy together with his political opinions combined to cost him his popularity and his place among the giants of 20^th Century American letters.

I believe that Jeffers did not hate humankind so much as he loved nature more. Civilisations come and go, he said: all of them eventually are corrupted, wither, and die. He saw this corruption in America, and the history of our country since his death has born him out. He made the mistake of speaking the truth as he saw it, and he was reviled for it, as so many prophets are. (“You and I, Cassandra,” he said, “You and I.”) The rocks, the sea, and the stars, he believed were permanent and noble. He also found nobility among wildlife, especially birds of prey.

Jeffers was a master of the long narrative poem, a form that was dying out even as he perfected it. Nobody writes that sort of poetry now, but you should his great works, “Roan Stallion,” “Give Your Heart to the Hawks,” “The Women at Point Sur,” “Cawdor,” etc. These works were quite popular and would have established him among the pantheon of great American poets were it not for his politics and his personality.

I cannot do Jeffers justice in a blog post; I cannot even begin to convey the power and, yes, majesty of his art. But I beg you to seek out his poetry on your own. Barnes and Noble usually carries a slim volume of selected poems, mostly the shorter works, and a large volume of selected works is available in paperback. Too, a number of his original books are available in the used book marketplace—try Abe Books. Finally, if you want to spend several hundred dollars, the Jeffers estate has issued a mult-volume work containing all his poems—published and unpublished—as well as his correspondence.

What follows is my favorite short Jeffers poem:

The Great Explosion

The universe expands and contracts like a great heart.

It is expanding, the farthest nebulae

Rush with the speed of light into empty space.

It will contract, the immense navies of stars and galaxies,

dust clouds and nebulae

Are recalled home, they crush against each other in one

harbor, they stick in one lump

And then explode it, nothing can hold them down; there is no

Way to express that explosion; all that exists

Roars into flame, the tortured fragments rush away from each

other into all the sky, new universes

Jewel the black breast of night; and far off the outer nebulae

like charging spearmen again

Invade emptiness.

No wonder we are so fascinated with

fireworks

And our huge bombs: it is a kind of homesickness perhaps for

the howling fireblast that we were born from.

But the whole sum of the energies

That made and contain the giant atom survives. It will

gather again and pile up, the power and the glory--

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, live and die, burn and be damned,

The great heart beating, pumping into our arteries His

terrible life.

He is beautiful beyond belief.

And we, God's apes--or tragic children--share in the beauty.

We see it above our torment, that's what life's for.

He is no God of love, no justice of a little city like Dante's

Florence, no anthropoid God

Making commandments: this is the God who does not care

and will never cease. Look at the seas there

Flashing against this rock in the darkness--look at the

tide-stream stars--and the fall of nations--and dawn

Wandering with wet white feet down the Carmel Valley to

meet the sea. These are real and we see their beauty.

The great explosion is probably just a metaphor--I know not--

of faceless violence, the root of all things.