The Wild God of the World: An Anthology of Robinson Jeffers

by Robinson Jeffers, Albert Gelpi (Editor)

Robinson Jeffers (1887-1962) is not only the greatest poet that the American West has produced but also a major poet of the twentieth century in the tradition of American prophetic poetry. This anthology serves as an introduction to Jeffers's work for the general reader and for students in courses on American poetry. Jeffers composed each volume of his verse around one or two long narrative or dramatic poems. The Wild God of the World follows this practice: in it, Cawdor , one of Jeffers's most powerful narratives, is surrounded by a representative selection of shorter poems. At the end of the book, the editor has provided revealing statements about Jeffers's poetry and poetics, and about his philosophy of nature and human nature.

Genres: Poetry, American, Ecology, Fiction, Anthologies, Literature

214 pages, Paperback

First published January 15, 2003

About the author

Collections of American poet John Robinson Jeffers, who sets many of his works in California, include Tamar and Other Poems (1924).

He knew the central coast and wrote mostly in classic narrative and epic form. Nevertheless, people today know also his short verse and consider him an symbol of the environmental movement.

The Harry Ransom humanities research center at the University of Texas at Austin and the libraries at Occidental College, the University of California, and Yale University collect many manuscripts and materials of Jeffers. Survivors published a collection of his letters posthumously as The Selected Letters of Robinson Jeffers, 1887–1962 (1968). Jeffers wrote other books or criticism and poetry: are: Poetry, Gongorism, and a Thousand Years (1949), Themes in My Poems (1956), Robinson Jeffers: Selected Poems (1965), The Alpine Christ and Other Poems (1974), What Odd Expedients" and Other Poems (1981), and Rock and Hawk: A Selection of Shorter Poems by Robinson Jeffers (1987).

Stanford University Press recently released a five-volume collection of the complete works of Robinson Jeffers. In an article titled, "A Black Sheep Joins the Fold", written upon the release of the collection in 2001, Stanford Magazine ably remarked that due to a number of circumstances, "there was never an authoritative, scholarly edition of California’s premier bard" until Stanford published the complete works.

Biographical studies include George Sterling, Robinson Jeffers: The Man and the Artist (1926); Louis Adamic, Robinson Jeffers (1929); Melba Bennett, Robinson Jeffers and the Sea (1936) and The Stone Mason of Tor House (1966); Edith Greenan, Of Una Jeffers (1939); Mabel Dodge Luhan, Una and Robin (1976; written in 1933); Ward Ritchie, Jeffers: Some Recollections of Robinson Jeffers (1977); and James Karman, Robinson Jeffers: Poet of California (1987). Books about Jeffers's career include L. C. Powell, Robinson Jeffers: The Man and His Work (1940; repr. 1973); William Everson, Robinson Jeffers: Fragments of an Older Fury (1968); Arthur B. Coffin, Robinson Jeffers: Poet of Inhumanism (1971); Bill Hotchkiss, Jeffers: The Sivaistic Vision (1975); James Karman, ed., Critical Essays on Robinson Jeffers (1990); Alex Vardamis The Critical Reputation of Robinson Jeffers (1972); and Robert Zaller, ed., Centennial Essays for Robinson Jeffers (1991). The Robinson Jeffers Newsletter, ed. Robert Brophy, is a valuable scholarly resource.

In a rare recording, Jeffers can be heard reading his "The Day Is A Poem" (September 19, 1939) on Poetry Speaks – Hear Great Poets Read Their Work from Tennyson to Plath, Narrated by Charles Osgood (Sourcebooks, Inc., c2001), Disc 1, #41; including text, with Robert Hass on Robinson Jeffers, pp. 88–95. Jeffers was also on the cover of Time – The Weekly Magazine, April 4, 1932 (pictured on p. 90. Poetry Speaks).

"Jeffers Studies", a journal of research on the poetry of Robinson Jeffers and related topics, is published semi-annually by the Robinson Jeffers Association.

Reviews

[Conrad · Rating 4 out of 5]

Robby Jeffers abandoned a promising career as a something-or-other, ran away to Big Sur, and married his lawyer's wife, where he built a brick tower by hand and wrote tons and tons of poetry. Florid and prone to self-caricature, this stuff is all about how We Can Never Prevail Against The Forces Of Nature and, by the way, All Human Effort Is Ultimately A Waste.

Still, there's a spot in my heart for Jeffers. Not too many poets out there manage to combine nihilism, fishing, and greek myth in a single work. He's just so humorless, it's like his mom read him the Oresteia Trilogy for bedtime stories.

[Audra · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was drawn to this book because of the poems of his quoted by the folks at the Dark Mountain project, but this collection really rubbed me the wrong way. Yet another privileged white man writing who just doesn't seem to get it (the nature he professes to loving, women in general). He talks to his cornerstone as though it should consider itself lucky to be part of his house. The presumption! I chugged thru it and am glad to have it out of my house.

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Probably one of the most transcendent moments of my life has been going to a reading of Jeffers' poetry: sitting beside one of my best friends, occasionally looking over and seeing the same grin on her face as mine, while a man, crutches leaning against the podium at which he stood, read to us: what an enskyment; what a life after death.

[B. Rule · Rating 2 out of 5]

Jeffers is, frankly, exhausting. Not that his poems or prose are hard to read (they're all pretty straightforward, and all deal with a very circumscribed set of images and concepts), but he's like the guy you get stuck with at a dinner party and you just can't wait to escape. He's simultaneously self-pitying, egotistical, and self-loathing. He's incessantly prattling on about how humans and their value systems ain't no good, and exhorting us all to turn only to the inhuman and bloody sublimity of nature for a "beyond good and evil" appreciation of reality. But he's doing so in poetry informed exclusively by human conceptions of beauty! And according to Jeffers, poetry is at best a distraction from real sublimity, and at worst a lie that tells you life has meaning when it doesn't, at least beyond the churn and fury of the life-cycle. Doesn't sound like he picked the right career, huh?

Further, he has married his metaphysical viewpoint to very strong prescriptivist moralizing. If you don't think like him, you're Doing It Wrong. All those modernist or symbolist poets writing about stuff other than the inhuman majesty of nature? They're Gongorists and Doing It Wrong. All those people who don't live on the California coast and spend their days thinking about the nobility of birds of prey? Yep, Doing It Wrong. So what is Right? Being a tough guy who stomps around building houses out of stone instead of Feeling Feelings. If you feel sad about something, you should just pack it down deep in your manly chest and instead thank the Materialist God that granite will outlast you and your cares. Jeffers spends a lot of time pouting about how life is a hard and brutal thing and the clear-eyed realist will love it only for that, but it feels an awfully lot like someone trying to convince himself. Jeffers leaves no room for a transcendent experience outside nature, nor even for a Spinozist god beyond but immanent within reality.

Ultimately, the emotion he most evoked in me while reading this was pity. It sounds miserable to be Robinson Jeffers. I did appreciate some of the poems for their plain-spoken beauty, and for the opportunity to spend time with a viewpoint quite different from my own. But this collection of works is probably better suited for a Clint Eastwood type than me.

[Keith Skinner · Rating 5 out of 5]

The selection of poems as well as the supplementary material provide an intimate look within the mind of Jeffers. If I were to buy only one Jeffers book, This would be it.

[J. Alfred · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have a feeling that people might be rediscovering Jeffers as a neglected master long after everyone from the twentieth century but Eliot is more or less a footnote: this, at least, is the impression that he'd like to give in a famous preface reprinted here. All his talk about geological time and the impassivity of granite and whatnot help the illusion to seem convincing.
Jeffers is an interesting poet. I use his "Purse-Seine" in classes not specially devoted to literature as an essay prompt; his "Shine, Perishing Republic" is just as good (the name alone garners some pretty good responses even from high schoolers). He's one that I think could interest the people who are habitually least interested in poetry: if you are interested in poetry, you ought to know him better. (Me too. 100 pages of this 200 page book is devoted to a long poem called "Cawdor" that I didn't know existed. Take several Greek, Shakespearian, and Old Testament tragedies, jam them together in rural California and add a wounded eagle, because Jeffers likes wounded eagles. Worth reading.)
If you ever want to feel resigned and stoic and fierce, pick this volume up. Plus it has a really good essay by Albert Gelpi.

[Greg Lehman · Rating 2 out of 5]

Another writer with ideas that far surpass their artistic choices, the work here feels dusty, obvious, and spoon-feeds the reader more adjectives and description than any competent editor should let pass their desk. Combined with some very unfortunate racism, I found much more to endure than enjoy in the poetry in this collection. Though Jeffers’ personal story and elements of his prose make for great stories and incredibly useful advice for writers and readers alike, this was a mixed bag sagging with a lot of dead weight, but had value as a lesson in the history of modern poetry, and also offered much to hold close in the way of environmentally-minded literature.

[1q79 · Rating 5 out of 5]

But let him not be distracted by the present; his business is with the future. For thus his work will be sifted of what is transient and crumbling, the chaff of time and the stuff that requires foot-notes. Permanent things, or things forever renewed, like the grass and human passions, are the material for poetry; whoever speaks across the gap of a thousand years will understand that he has to speak of permanent things, and rather clearly too, or who would hear him?

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lovely book. Great imagery. Poignant themes.

[Emma · Rating 5 out of 5]

"on the oak, on the eagle's prison, one glory / Without significance pervaded the world."

[Roopa]

https://mailchi.mp/brainpickings/robi...

[Morgan · Rating 5 out of 5]

The girls that get it, get it. The girls that don’t? Don’t.
Absolutely adore his work.

[philosodendron · Rating 4 out of 5]

5 star poet, not my favourite poems in this anthology

[Cooch · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent

The longer of these poems read like modernised Greek tragedy, which is not a bad thing. His lyric poetry is equally powerful.

[Katie]

Jeffers has been a favorite poet of mine since high school. There is something so haunting and beautiful about his poetry. It’s always a treat to revisit his work!

[Wendy Babiak · Rating 5 out of 5]

I hunted down the work of Robinson Jeffers after someone at a forum said my work "sounded like" his. This anthology is an excellent introduction to his poems, and includes the epic narrative poem "Cawdor" on which he labored for years. The short poem "Flight of Swans" is probably my all-time favorite. His work has a strong but flexible metrical component and chews on issues that also obsess and enchant me (man's inhumanity and nature's glory & cruelty, the dignity of work, etc.).

[Tifany · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well, I was in Carmel, so I had to read Jeffers. Finally tackled CAWDOR, which has some incredibly beautiful passages--mostly of the experience of various souls at the moment of death; not what you'd expect, and not for the stuffed bunny loving crowd, unless the stuffed bunny is a professional taxidermy. Includes many of Jeffers' best shorter lyric poems as well, though not the wonderful MEDEA.

[Mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

Poetry