Customer Reviews (3) 
the dark god calls . . .
The work of Robinson Jeffers is undergoing a slow, but assured and due re-evaluation.The impending ecological collapse, the crazed banality of global Americanization, the ruthless insensibility and arrogance of globalization, our mindless and irresponsible over- population, all attest to Jeffers prescience and the longsuffering of the planet which he attempted with varying success to articulate.Yet, aside from William Everson and one other reviewer here on Amazon, I feel quite alone in asserting that Jeffers is the most important 20th century American literary poet.Let it be said: `The Answer' may be the most telling poem ever penned on the defiled soil of this continent - and the work collected in the celebrated Ansel Adams Sierra Club volume `Not Man Apart' is of a level uniformly high enough to compare favorably to any anthology ever collected from a single poetic voice.Jeffers, at his best, is a good as good gets.
But, as with the work of all poets, the best being very fine, the greater body of the work becomes increasingly uneven. The philosopher Plato seemed to identify a salient truth when he noted that the problem with poetry (as with human creation in general) is that the poet is sometimes inspired - overflowing with the good, the beautiful, the true - but then again, and perhaps more often than we would want, less than inspired - and again at times, unabashedly awful.Norman Mailer, analyzing pugilistic technique, observed, "your best move and your worst move are right next to each other".And perhaps it is in his humanity, oft misinterpreted by lesser minds, yet none-the-less human and fallible in his humanness, that Jeffers reputation has somewhat foundered.Jeffers was ambitious.He attempts much, and achieves a bit.But what he achieves is of such value that it refuses to be ignored or discarded without full hearing. And that is the criterion for poetry: we find greatness not in the aspiration, but the revelation.
Which is why I feel impelled to note one of Jeffers' currently lesser read (though in his lifetime, major) publications, `Roan Stallion, Tamar and Other Poems' (New York: Boni & Liveright, 1925).The book is structured around a number of epics penned on California's Central Coast: `Roan Stallion' (the heroine, California - native American -the book begins with her reminding the guy she's sleeping with how he lost her in a poker game . . .), `Tamar' (...the half-moon was like a dancing-girl / No, a drunkard's last half-dollar...), `The Tower Beyond Tragedy', `The Coast-Range Christ', `Fauna', and a collection of shorter poems, including the magisterial `Continent's End'.There is, admittedly, much to wade through: the prosaic, the contrived, the feckless, the inert.Yet within, and as plentiful as the sands from which he cried, are passages of the most immense power, nobility, and truth.I cite but a few:
"A dot of light, dropped up the star-gleam,
poor brother, poor brother you played the
fool too.
But not enough, it is not enough
To taste delight and passion and disgust and loathing
and agony... you have to
be wide alive, `an open mouth', you said, all the
while, to reach this heaven
you'll never grow up to."
"Children for all their innocent minds,
Hide dry and bitter lights in the eye, they dream without
Knowing it
The inhuman years to be accomplished,
The inhuman powers, the servile cunning under pressure,
In a land grown old, heavy and crowded.
There are happy places that fate skips; here is not one of
them;
The tides of the brute womb, the excess
And weight of life spilled out like water, the last migration
Gathering against this holier valley-mouth
That knows its fate beforehand, the flow of the womb,
Banked back
By the older flood of the ocean, to swallow it."
"While this America settles in the mould of its vulgarity,
heavily thickening to empire,
And protest, only a bubble in the molten mass, pops and
sighs out, and the mass hardens,
I sadly smiling remember that the flower fades to make fruit,
The fruit rots to make earth."
"The tides are in our veins, we still mirror the stars, life is
your child, but there is in me
Older and harder than life and more impartial, the eye that
watched before there was an ocean"
"Serenely similing
Face of the godlike man made God, who tore the web of
human passions . . ."
"The Dark God calls.Some old king in a fable, is it?"
the dark god calls . . .
The work of Robinson Jeffers is undergoing a slow, but assured and due re-evaluation.The impending ecological collapse, the crazed banality of global Americanization, the ruthless insensibility and arrogance of globalization, our mindless and irresponsible over- population, all attest to Jeffers prescience and the longsuffering of the planet which he attempted with varying success to articulate.Yet, aside from William Everson and one other reviewer here on Amazon, I feel quite alone in asserting that Jeffers is the most important 20th century American literary poet.Let it be said: `The Answer' may be the most telling poem ever penned on the defiled soil of this continent - and the work collected in the celebrated Ansel Adams Sierra Club volume `Not Man Apart' is of a level uniformly high enough to compare favorably to any anthology ever collected from a single poetic voice.Jeffers, at his best, is a good as good gets.
But, as with the work of all poets, the best being very fine, the greater body of the work becomes increasingly uneven. The philosopher Plato seemed to identify a salient truth when he noted that the problem with poetry (as with human creation in general) is that the poet is sometimes inspired - overflowing with the good, the beautiful, the true - but then again, and perhaps more often than we would want, less than inspired - and again at times, unabashedly awful.Norman Mailer, analyzing pugilistic technique, observed, "your best move and your worst move are right next to each other".And perhaps it is in his humanity, oft misinterpreted by lesser minds, yet none-the-less human and fallible in his humanness, that Jeffers reputation has somewhat foundered.Jeffers was ambitious.He attempts much, and achieves a bit.But what he achieves is of such value that it refuses to be ignored or discarded without full hearing. And that is the criterion for poetry: we find greatness not in the aspiration, but the revelation.
Which is why I feel impelled to note one of Jeffers' currently lesser read (though in his lifetime, major) publications, `Roan Stallion, Tamar and Other Poems' (New York: Boni & Liveright, 1925).The book is structured around a number of epics penned on California's Central Coast: `Roan Stallion' (the heroine, California - native American -the book begins with her reminding the guy she's sleeping with how he lost her in a poker game . . .), `Tamar' (...the half-moon was like a dancing-girl / No, a drunkard's last half-dollar...), `The Tower Beyond Tragedy', `The Coast-Range Christ', `Fauna', and a collection of shorter poems, including the magisterial `Continent's End'.There is, admittedly, much to wade through: the prosaic, the contrived, the feckless, the inert.Yet within, and as plentiful as the sands from which he cried, are passages of the most immense power, nobility, and truth.I cite but a few:
"A dot of light, dropped up the star-gleam,
poor brother, poor brother you played the
fool too.
But not enough, it is not enough
To taste delight and passion and disgust and loathing
and agony... you have to
be wide alive, `an open mouth', you said, all the
while, to reach this heaven
you'll never grow up to."
"Children for all their innocent minds,
Hide dry and bitter lights in the eye, they dream without
Knowing it
The inhuman years to be accomplished,
The inhuman powers, the servile cunning under pressure,
In a land grown old, heavy and crowded.
There are happy places that fate skips; here is not one of
them;
The tides of the brute womb, the excess
And weight of life spilled out like water, the last migration
Gathering against this holier valley-mouth
That knows its fate beforehand, the flow of the womb,
Banked back
By the older flood of the ocean, to swallow it."
"While this America settles in the mould of its vulgarity,
heavily thickening to empire,
And protest, only a bubble in the molten mass, pops and
sighs out, and the mass hardens,
I sadly smiling remember that the flower fades to make fruit,
The fruit rots to make earth."
"The tides are in our veins, we still mirror the stars, life is
your child, but there is in me
Older and harder than life and more impartial, the eye that
watched before there was an ocean"
"Serenely similing
Face of the godlike man made God, who tore the web of
human passions . . ."
"The Dark God calls.Some old king in a fable, is it?"
The Dark God calls...
The work of Robinson Jeffers is undergoing a slow, but assured and due re-evaluation.The impending ecological collapse, the crazed banality of global Americanization, the ruthless insensibility and arrogance of globalization, our mindless and irresponsible over- population, all attest to Jeffers prescience and the longsuffering of the planet which he attempted with varying success to articulate.Yet, aside from William Everson and one other reviewer here on Amazon, I feel quite alone in asserting that Jeffers is the most important 20th century American literary poet.Let it be said: `The Answer' may be the most telling poem ever penned on the defiled soil of this continent - and the work collected in the celebrated Ansel Adams Sierra Club volume `Not Man Apart' is of a level uniformly high enough to compare favorably to any anthology ever collected from a single poetic voice.Jeffers, at his best, is a good as good gets.
But, as with the work of all poets, the best being very fine, the greater body of the work becomes increasingly uneven. The philosopher Plato seemed to identify a salient truth when he noted that the problem with poetry (as with human creation in general) is that the poet is sometimes inspired - overflowing with the good, the beautiful, the true - but then again, and perhaps more often than we would want, less than inspired - and again at times, unabashedly awful.Norman Mailer, analyzing pugilistic technique, observed, "your best move and your worst move are right next to each other".And perhaps it is in his humanity, oft misinterpreted by lesser minds, yet none-the-less human and fallible in his humanness, that Jeffers reputation has somewhat foundered.Jeffers was ambitious.He attempts much, and achieves a bit.But what he achieves is of such value that it refuses to be ignored or discarded without full hearing. And that is the criterion for poetry: we find greatness not in the aspiration, but the revelation.
Which is why I feel impelled to note one of Jeffers' currently lesser read (though in his lifetime, major) publications, `Roan Stallion, Tamar and Other Poems' (New York: Boni & Liveright, 1925).The book is structured around a number of epics penned on California's Central Coast: `Roan Stallion' (the heroine, California - native American -the book begins with her reminding the guy she's sleeping with how he lost her in a poker game . . .), `Tamar' (...the half-moon was like a dancing-girl / No, a drunkard's last half-dollar...), `The Tower Beyond Tragedy', `The Coast-Range Christ', `Fauna', and a collection of shorter poems, including the magisterial `Continent's End'.There is, admittedly, much to wade through: the prosaic, the contrived, the feckless, the inert.Yet within, and as plentiful as the sands from which he cried, are passages of the most immense power, nobility, and truth.I cite but a few:
"A dot of light, dropped up the star-gleam,
poor brother, poor brother you played the
fool too.
But not enough, it is not enough
To taste delight and passion and disgust and loathing
and agony... you have to
be wide alive, `an open mouth', you said, all the
while, to reach this heaven
you'll never grow up to."
"Children for all their innocent minds,
Hide dry and bitter lights in the eye, they dream without
Knowing it
The inhuman years to be accomplished,
The inhuman powers, the servile cunning under pressure,
In a land grown old, heavy and crowded.
There are happy places that fate skips; here is not one of
them;
The tides of the brute womb, the excess
And weight of life spilled out like water, the last migration
Gathering against this holier valley-mouth
That knows its fate beforehand, the flow of the womb,
Banked back
By the older flood of the ocean, to swallow it."
"While this America settles in the mould of its vulgarity,
heavily thickening to empire,
And protest, only a bubble in the molten mass, pops and
sighs out, and the mass hardens,
I sadly smiling remember that the flower fades to make fruit,
The fruit rots to make earth."
"The tides are in our veins, we still mirror the stars, life is
your child, but there is in me
Older and harder than life and more impartial, the eye that
watched before there was an ocean"
"Serenely similing
Face of the godlike man made God, who tore the web of
human passions . . ."
"The Dark God calls.Some old king in a fable, is it?"
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