Review of James Karman, Robinson Jeffers: Poet and Prophet (Stanford University Press, 2015).
Lee Masters, Frost and Robinson Jeffers all really have something to say and some real art. – C.S. Lewis, Letter to Bede Griffiths (April 22, 1954)
Robinson Jeffers is, probably, one of the finest poets of the tragic in the American literary canon. My wife (Karin) and I make an annual pilgrimage (usually in April) to the Big Sur area in California when the high ridge and low land flowers are in abundant display and profuse colour. We walk the ridge of Santa Lucia Mountain with the ocean thousands of feet below us, nighttime replete with many lanterns in the sky. It was in Carmel by the Sea (Northern Big Sur) where Robinson and Una Jeffers lived much of their lives. Tor House and Hawk Tower (where the Jeffers’ lived) are sights worth the seeing, perched as they once were on a rock protrusion facing into the varied seasons and temperament of Nature and the foaming ocean waves. Needless to say, Jeffers was no naïve Nature romantic—he was, in fact, a poetic realist about Nature, Humanity, Civilization and Culture.
The publication by one of the finest Jeffers scholars, James Karman, Robinson Jeffers: Poet and Prophet, does Jeffers proud. The biography of sorts tracks Jeffers’ literary and personal life in a chronological way, noting both the waxing and waning of Jeffers and his perennial poetic message (certainly not for the sentimental or faint of heart). Each of the four major sections probes well and wisely into Robinson and Una’s layered journey: 1) Wild Honey: 1887-1915), 2) Tides of Fire: 1915-1930, 3) The Whirlwind’s Heart: 1930-1945, and 4) Eagle and Hawk: 1945-1962. Jeffers had an uncanny way of cutting to the core and centre of the human heart, culture and empires—he saw the rise and fall (like ocean waves) of civilizations and the sheer indifference of Nature to Humanity. This led Jeffers to the notion of “Inhumanism”, that is, a position in which Nature has the final Say. Humanity might build, create, extol and spread the artifacts of the human will and making, but when Nature decides enough is enough, Humpty Dumpty will come tumbling down.
The tough, relentless and rigorous questions that Jeffers raises about theology, the church and God must be faced and pondered with all honesty. The fact that Jeffers heeded well the Greek tragic tradition tends to be rare for Americans who tend to either fawn before the assured results of the American empire or some form of progressivism—Jeffers lingered with the tragic and would not leave such a place. How then can the tragic and hope dwell in the human heart, mind and imagination without one silencing the other? Such was the transparent honesty of Jeffers that he dwelt with these hard and not to be denied questions, tensions and issues.
Karman, to his judicious and faithful decades-long Jeffers research and writing, has offered the reader a superb primer into the life and writing of Jeffers (a must read for those who see the all too human journey in all its layered complexity). Robinson Jeffers: Poet and Prophet has an uncanny way of articulating what it means to be both a fine and mature poet and, also, hints and tendencies towards the prophetic—most rare indeed. It is significant that C.S. Lewis had such a respect for Jeffers.
Ron Dart
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