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CHARACTERS AND PLOTS IN ROBINSON JEFFERS' NARRATIVE POEMS
by Robert L. Gale
 Robinson Jeffers (1887-1962) was a unique American poet, of paramount importance. He was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and was educated in Pittsburgh, in Switzerland and Germany, and in a California medical school and a Washington-state forestry school. Happily married for thirty-seven years and with twin sons, he designed and helped build their home in Carmel, California, partly of granite. (It is now both an historical shrine and a tourist attraction.) Jeffers’ staggering creative output totals 491 poems of various lengths, from a dozen lines to narratives as long as novels. This book is restricted to a consideration of his eighteen narrative poems. It synopsizes their melodramatic plots and discusses their well over two hundred characters–with frequent commentary by critics, not all of whom approve of the highly controversial Jeffers. His plots often depict family members in conflict, several times tangled in incestuous relationships resulting in graphically dramatized violence. Jeffers presents other characters misguided by patriotism, dying in the process, but then haunting those who led them astray. Jeffers clearly prefers majestic nature, particularly that of his beloved Big Sur region. He especially admires the solidity of its rocky coast and the ferocity of hawks ruling its big skies. He makes his “inhumanist” philosophy abundantly clear by repeatedly saying our earth would have been better fashioned—by his notion of an indifferent deity–without any “humans” at all. At their best, Jeffers’ long, free-verse lines are utterly captivating, and regularly so vivid and colorful that turning or returning to his poetry–and even employing this book as an introduction–will be an unforgettable experience.
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Word Association