This volume is in three parts. Part I (1903-1920) includes Jeffers’s earliest poetry and poems that were never published or were recently rediscovered. Part II (1920-1948) gathers all Jeffers’s major prose works. Part III (1910-1962) is mostly material that Jeffers never published, and apparently never tried to publish. The book design is by Adrian Wilson in a 7 1/2 by 10 inch format.
Robinson Jeffers (1887-1962) is not only the greatest poet that California (and indeed the American West) has produced but a major poet of the twentieth century who occupies a prominent place in the tradition of American prophetic poetry. Jeffers consciously set himself apart from the poetry of his generation--by physical isolation at his home in Carmel, by his unusual poetic form, and by his stance as an "anti-modernist." Yet his work represents a profound, and profoundly original, artistic response to problems that shaped modernist poetry and that still perplex poets today; how to reconcile scientific and artistic discourses and modes of vision; how to connect present-day experience to myths perceived as lying at the origins of human culture; how to renew the poetic language and how (or whether) to present art's claim to moral, spiritual, or epistemological seriousness within representations of modern phenomena. For Jeffers, as for no other important modern American poet, there has never been a collected poems, not even a truly representative selected poems--the current Selected Poetry, first published in 1938, contains no work from the last three volumes published during Jeffers' lifetime or from his posthumous volume. Now, for the first time, all of Jeffers' completed poems, both published and unpublished, are presented in a single, comprehensive, and textually authoritative edition. The first three volumes of this four-volume work, will present chronologically all of Jeffers' published work from 1920 to 1963. The present volume consists of poems published between 1920 and 1928, and includes some of his greatest and best-known poems--Tamar,Roan Stallion,The Women at Point Sur, and Cawdor--as well as a recently discovered long poem, "Home." There is also an Editorial Note and a General Introduction.
“The forgotten giant of American poetry . . . For those who would discover Jeffers . . . this is the place to start—and a place to return again and again.” —Tim Hunt, Washington State University 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. “Of all the poets of his generation, [Robinson Jeffers] made our relation to this earth and sea and sky and wheeling seasons and the evolutionary processes that made trees and salmon runs and hunting hawks, his subject. As that relation grows more troubled, his words become more necessary. To have this beautifully edited and freshly seen anthology is a gift.” —Robert Hass, University of California, Berkeley
This final volume of the first comprehensive edition of all of Robinson Jeffers's completed poems, both published and unpublished, consists of commentary: various procedural explanations and textual evidence for the edition's texts, transcriptions of working notes for the poems and of alternate and discarded passages, a chronology of Jeffers's career, appendixes, and indexes.
“[A] deeply informative biography . . . situates the poet in his time and place, tracing the effect of both contemporary history and wild nature on his work.” —Edwin Cranston, Harvard University The precipitous cliffs, rolling headlands, and rocky inlets of the California coast come alive in the poetry of John Robinson Jeffers, an icon of the environmental movement. In this concise and accessible biography, Jeffers scholar James Karman reveals deep insights into this passionate and complex figure and establishes Jeffers as a leading American poet of prophetic vision. In a move that would define his life’s work, Jeffers’ family relocated to California from Pennsylvania in 1903 when he was sixteen. At the height of his popularity in the 1920s and 1930s, Jeffers became one of the few poets ever featured on the cover of Time magazine, and posthumously put on a U.S. postage stamp. Writing by kerosene lamp in a granite tower that he had built himself, his vivid and descriptive poetry of the coast evoked the difficulty and beauty of the wild and inspired photographers such as Edward Weston and Ansel Adams. He was known for long narrative blank verse that shook up the national literary scene, but in the 1940s his interest in the Greek classics led to several adaptations which were staged on Broadway to great success. Inspiring later artists from Charles Bukowski to Czeslaw Milosz and even the Beach Boys, Robinson Jeffers’ contribution to American letters is skillfully brought back out of the shadows of history in this compelling biography of a complex man of poetic genius who wrote so powerfully of the astonishing beauty of nature.
Current debates in the environmental humanities, animal studies, and related fields increasingly revolve around this question: What to do with “the human”? Is the human a category worth preserving? Should it be replaced with the post-human? Should marginalized and minoritarian groups advocate for a universal humanism? What is the relationship between humanism and anthropocentrism? Is a genuinely non-anthropocentric mode of thinking and living possible for human beings? This book argues that the writings of twentieth-century poet Robinson Jeffers offer twenty-first-century readers a number of crucial insights concerning such questions and timely advice about how not to be human. For Jeffers, our tendency to turn inward on ourselves and to indulge in human narcissism is at the heart of the social, economic, and existential ills that plague modern societies. As a remedy, Jeffers recommends turning ourselves outward—beyond the self and beyond the human—and learning to affirm and even love the inhuman cosmos in all of its terrible beauty. In the process, Jeffers helps us find our way back to ourselves, but this time no longer as “human” in the traditional sense but as plain members of the inhuman world.
A photographic celebration of the landscapes that have influenced some of America’s most important nature writers—from John Muir to Terry Tempest Williams to Barbara Kingsolver. Since 2019, Donald S. Clark has documented the places that have been instrumental in influencing the lives and words of both historic and contemporary nature and environmental writers throughout the United States. While we have always felt their passionate connection to their own environments, no book has ever made this visual connection between writers and their land before—the relationship between prose and place. Featuring more than 40 of America’s most important writers, the content is as far-reaching as America itself: from sea to shining sea, forest to prairie, and mountain to coastline. Accompanying each gallery of stunning photography is a selected excerpt by the writer about their land. With the increasingly noticeable effects of climate change, the significance of these writers—and their personal connections to the environment—is even more timely. This unique and compelling story of the land and how it has inspired some of our greatest poets and authors will make a wonderful gift for budding environmentalists, students of nature writing, or anyone interested in conservation.
This book examines the manifestations of materiality across different gothic media to show the inhuman at the heart of literature, film and contemporary media, outlining a philosophy of horror that deals with the horror of the nonhuman, the machine and the nonorganic. The author explores how materiality lends itself ideally to discussions of gothic and horror and acts as a threat to attempts to control meaning which falls outside the realm of consciousness. It brings the two together by examining the manifestations of this materiality to focus on a form of horror that is concerned with the (in) human by reading blood as the conduit of an unnameable materiality that circulates through gothic media, seducing with its familiar mask of gothic aesthetics only to uncover the horror of a totally alienating and inhuman otherness. Film, media, popular culture, philosophy and nineteenth-century literature are brought together and juxtaposed to create a continuity of ideas, and highlighting differences. The book offers innovative readings of notions of blood inscription in different media, of the Dark Web, accelerationism and technoscience to account for the widespread haemophilia in contemporary culture. This title is an essential read for researchers, undergraduate and postgraduate students in film studies, media studies, literature, philosophy, cultural theory and popular culture. Its interdisciplinary nature, clear exposition of thought and theoretical ideas will make it a key resource for both students and for general readers with an interest in contemporary horror, media and pop culture.
Robinson Jeffers (1887-1962) is not only the greatest poet that California (and indeed the American West) has produced but a major poet of the twentieth century who occupies a prominent place in the tradition of American prophetic poetry. Now, for the first time, all of Jeffers's completed poems, both published and unpublished, are presented in a single, comprehensive, and textually authoritative edition of five volumes, here available as a set.
