During this time, Jeffers published volumes of long narrative blank verse that shook up the national literary scene. These poems, including Tamar and Roan Stallion, introduced Jeffers as a master of the epic form, reminiscent of ancient Greek poets. These poems were full of controversial subject matter such as incest, murder and parricide. Jeffers's short verse includes "Hurt Hawks," "The Purse-Seine" and "Shine, Perishing Republic." His intense relationship with the physical world is described in often brutal and apocalyptic verse, and demonstrates a preference for the natural world over what he sees as the negative influence of civilization. Jeffers did not accept the idea that meter is a fundamental part of poetry, and, like Marianne Moore, claimed his verse was not composed in meter, but "rolling stresses." He believed meter was imposed on poetry by man and not a fundamental part of its nature.
Robinson Jeffers U.S. postage stamp – 1973Many books followed Jeffers's initial success with the epic form, including an adaptation of Euripides' Medea, which became a hit Broadway play starring Dame Judith Anderson.
George Sterling and Jeffers were good friends. Fellow poets Edgar Lee Masters and, longer, Benjamin De Casseres, were correspondents. Jeffers encountered D.H. Lawrence in Mabel Dodge Luhan's circle at Taos; reports of how well they got along vary. In Carmel, Jeffers became the focal point for a small but devoted group of admirers. At the peak of his fame, he was one of the few poets to be featured on the cover of Time magazine. He was asked to read at the Library of Congress, and was posthumously put on a U.S. postage stamp.
Jeffers' 1948 collection, The Double Axe and Other Poems (1948), included several poems critical of American involvement in the Second World War and his publisher, Random House, suppressed some poems and included a note that Jeffers' views were not those of the publishing company. The book was negatively reviewed by several critics, including poets Yvor Winters and Kenneth Rexroth. By 1977 Jeffers' reservations seemed prescient and Liveright published The Double-Axe & Other Poems including Eleven Suppressed Poems, with an important introduction by William Everson, Jeffers' major posthumous advocate and poetic adherent. Throughout the fifties and afterward Jeffers figured as an important voice for the worth and rights of the natural world, as the environmental movement gathered strength. His long-time friend, the photographer Ansel Adams, was a close ally in this, as was Edward Weston.
Inhumanism
Jeffers coined the word "inhumanism": the belief that humankind is too self-centered and indifferent to the "astonishing beauty of things." In the poem "Carmel Point" Jeffers called on humans to "uncenter" themselves.[5] In "The Double Axe" Jeffers explicitly described "inhumanism" as "a shifting of emphasis and significance from man to 'notman'; the rejection of human solipsism, and recognition of the trans-human magnificence... This manner of thought and feeling is neither misanthropic nor pessimist... It offers a reasonable detachment as rule of conduct, instead of love, hate and envy... it provides magnificence for the religious instinct, and satisfies our need to admire greatness and rejoice in beauty."[6]
In The Loyalties of Robinson Jeffers, the first in-depth study of Jeffers not written by one of his circle, poet and critic J. Radcliffe Squires addresses the question of a reconciliation of the beauty of the world and potential beauty in mankind: "Jeffers has asked us to look squarely at the universe. He has told us that materialism has its message, its relevance, and its solace. These are different from the message, relevance, and solace of humanism. Humanism teaches us best why we suffer, but materialism teaches us how to suffer."[7]
