The Selected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers, edited by Tim Hunt.
Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2001.
$25.95 (softbound) - 758 pages.

I need not think beyond the west water, that a million persons are presently dying of hunger in the provinces of China. I need not think of the Russian labor camps, the German Prison camps, nor any of those other centers that make the earth shine like a star with cruelty for light.

- Memoir, p.529

When I was an English major at WCU back in the 1950s, I remember a course in 20th Century American poets that proved to be strange, eclectic and occasionally interesting. That was the first time I saw the name Robinson Jeffers. Unfortunately, our instructor ignored Jeffers despite the fact that the textbook (an old one) called him “one of the three greatest poets of the 20th century.” (The other two were Frost and Eliot). When I asked why we were skipping Jeffers, the instructor made some vague statement about him “falling from favor.” I was puzzled by this since the blurb in the text mentioned the fact that Jeffers had been on the cover of Time magazine and had the enthusiastic endorsement of his fellow poets, including Millay, Auden and Sandburg.

I went on to teach English in north Georgia and a series of small colleges. Each time I began teaching at a new school with a new text, I always looked to see if Jeffers was there. He wasn’t. Frost and Eliot were well represented, but Jeffers had been banished. Why? Outside of knowing that he had written a classic version of Medea, I knew nothing about him. What remarkable sin could bring a poet from national prominence to obscurity? Well, thanks to the Internet and a half-dozen biographies (mostly recent), the mystery is solved.

In 1986, the noted scholar and critic Jeanetta Boswell echoed my own experience when she said, “I came to Jeffers with little knowledge and less appreciation. I stayed and lived to regret the years I taught American literature and did nothing with Jeffers. The truth is, I neglected Jeffers because I did not know he was a major poet.” Boswell also noted that textbooks were partly responsible since they seemed to have virtually banished him from their pages.

Well, dear readers, let me beg your indulgence while I go back and lay the groundwork for this literary tragedy. It is a story worth the telling.

Born in 1887 of modestly wealthy and scholarly parents, Jeffers enjoyed an enviable education. He studied in Germany, traveled, became interested in astronomy, studied for a medical career, but abandoned it for forestry. Eventually, he found his way to the coast of California. When he visited the Big Sur region, he underwent a kind of spiritual change that shaped both his life and his poetry. He built a home and a four-tiered tower on the edge of the ocean, and in the ensuing years he became something of a recluse. With a remarkable wife and two children, he devoted himself to a “life of meditation.” He seemed indifferent to material comforts and lived without electricity until 1949. According to his letters, he wanted no distractions — nothing between him and the natural world.

Jeffers gradually developed a philosophy which he called Inhumanism. The term has unfortunate connotations since it suggests “inhumanity” or cruelty. Actually, the term was meant to encompass an attitude toward life that exhalted the natural world. Many of Jeffers’ poems are moving evocations of cosmic grandeur — stars, galaxies, ocean storms, the cycle of seasons, hawks and eagles. In fact, the only defect that Jeffers found amid this vast design was... humanity. Some of Jeffers most passionate lyrics contrast the majesty of creation with the irrelevance of human existence. We are a hopelessly flawed species, a caprice of nature that will not be duplicated... a kind of “inferior lichen” which will soon vanish, and the sooner the better!

However, it wasn’t the philosophy of Inhumanism that made Jeffers a literary outcast. Critics occasionally expressed their opposition to a philosophy that found humanity hopelessly flawed, but the world was willing to accept Jeffers’ views in theory. When Jeffers’ works stressed mankind’s inability to live without greed, power and deceit, the public often agreed. The poet’s oft-repeated charges of world hypocrisy were often acknowledged: The marvels of technology were used — not to alleviate suffering, but to annihilate and enslave. Other writers sometimes noted that they found Jeffers’ conclusions too dark and hopeless. Surely we weren’t that bad!

However, the coming of WWII changed all of that. When Hitler rose to power and the bombing of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese unleashed a mounting wave of patriotism, Jeffers was suddenly “un-American.” The work that proved to be his undoing, entitled The Double Axe, contained a scathing attack on the perpetrators of suffering. Jeffers did not choose sides, but denounced everyone — Germany, Japan, Italy, England and ... the United States! When his poems cataloged the atrocities, the bombed cities and the great waves of suffering that engulfed Europe, he found the United States culpable as well. Public reaction was immediate and devastating.

James Shebl’s comprehensive account of Jeffers’ fall from grace appears in In This Wild Water. When Random House found itself in possession of Jeffery’s manuscript for The Double Axe, and discovered the vehement attacks on Roosevelt and Churchill, they refused to publish the work unless they were allowed to edit it. Incredibly, the editor of Random House, Saxe Commins and the president, Bennett Cerf, decided to “improve” the text. Not only did they edit and revise Jeffers’ poems, but they attempted to distance themselves from the publication by printing a “disclaimer” in the front of the book noting that they did not endorse Jeffers’ opinions.

Reviewing this episode after the lapse of half a century is a disquieting experience. Like the McCarthy hearings and the hysteria attending the blacklisting of actors and writers in the ‘50s, Jeffers’ fate does not reflect America at its best. Ironically, the incident does add credibility to Jeffer’s philosophy of Inhumanism — we do at times appear to be a hopelessly flawed species, infected with paranoia, rage and self-importance.

Jeffers lived quietly at Big Sur for the remainder of his life, spending a great deal of time in the tower where he watched storms, sunrises, the migration of birds, the flight of hawks and the rise and decline of the moon. Following his death in 1962, Tor House became a foundation dedicated to preserving the natural beauty of Big Sur. In the 1970s, the environmentalist movement rediscovered Jeffers, and a slow but certain interest began. California eventually acquired a Robinson Jeffers stamp and scholarly studies began to appear.

He is even back in the textbooks!

I regret that I have not published selections from any of the hundreds of poems that evoke the beauty of sea, sun and stars. However, I did feel that the best interests of this poet could be served by attempting a brief summary of his life — who he was, what he believed and what it cost him. Hopefully, it will encourage readers to read his works.

(Gary Carden is a writer, storyteller and lecturer whose book, Mason Jars in the Flood, was recently named Book of the Year by the Appalachian Writers Association. He can be reached at gcarden498@aol.com.)