Robinson Jeffers
Robinson Jeffers
John Robinson Jefferswas an American poet, known for his work about the central California coast. Much of Jeffers' poetry was written in narrative and epic form, but he is also known for his shorter verse and is considered an icon of the environmental movement. Influential and highly regarded in some circles, despite or because of his philosophy of "inhumanism," Jeffers believed that transcending conflict required human concerns to be de-emphasized in favor of the boundless whole. This led him to...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth10 January 1887
CityPittsburgh, PA
CountryUnited States of America
capacities corruption good man mankind nature needs peace progress ten thousand until
It is good for man To try all changes, progress and corruption, powers, peace and anguish, not to go down the dinosaur's way Until all his capacities have been explored: and it is good for him To know that his needs and nature are no more changed, in fact, in ten thousand years than the beaks of eagles.
business express holy intricate noble poetry sole understand
To feel greatly, and understand greatly, and express greatly, the naturalBeauty, is the sole business of poetry.The rest's diversion: those holy or noble sentiments, the intricate ideas,The love, lust, longing: reasons, but not the reason.
achieved beauty bones build catch darkness hatch heavens hunter last nest prey pure swan white wild
Shiva... is the only hunter that will ever catch the wild swan;The prey she will take last is the wild white swan of the beauty of things.Then she will be alone, pure destruction, achieved and supreme,Empty darkness under the death-tent wings.She will build a nest of the swan's bones and hatch a new brood,Hang new heavens with new birds, all be renewed.
evolution eyes fear fine fleet great hunger limbs tooth
What but the wolf's tooth whittled so fine The fleet limbs of the antelope?What but fear winged the birds, and hunger Jewelled with such eyes the great goshawk's head?
agony animal food great hates insanity instantly interior itself love mankind mind parts persons powerful private search seeks success tension tormented tortured truth turned twist until wants
Why does insanity always twist the great answers? Because only tormented persons want truth.Man is an animal like other animals, wants food and success and women, not truth. Only if the mind Tortured by some interior tension has despaired of happiness: then it hates its life-cage and seeks further, And finds, if it is powerful enough. But instantly the private agony that made the search Muddles the finding. Then search for truth is foredoomed and frustrate? Only stained fragments? Until the mind has turned its love from itself and man, from parts to the whole.
cold deep feeling land margins pacific strength
The deep dark-shining Pacific leans on the land Feeling his cold strength To the outmost margins
apart appears beauty days despair divine drown earth greatest hand integrity life love man organic pitiful share stars ugly wholeness
A severed hand Is an ugly thing and man dissevered from the earth and stars and his history... for contemplation or in fact... Often appears atrociously ugly. Integrity is wholeness, the greatest beauty is Organic wholeness, the wholeness of life and things, the divine beauty of the universe. Love that, not man Apart from that, or else you will share man's pitiful confusions, or drown in despair when his days darken.
flowing noble
Look how noble the world is, the lonely-flowing waters, the secret-keeping stones, the flowing sky.
race break-through fire
Humanity is the start of the race; I say Humanity is the mould to break away from, the crust to break through, the coal to break into fire, The atom to be split.
hate twilight white
I hate my verses, every line, every word. Oh pale and brittle pencils ever to try One grass-blade's curve, or the throat of one bird That clings to twig, ruffled against white sky. Oh cracked and twilight mirrors ever to catch One color, one glinting flash, of the splendor of things.
mother rain thinking
When the sun shouts and people abound One thinks there were the ages of stone and the age of bronze And the iron age; iron the unstable metal; Steel made of iron, unstable as his mother; the tow-ered-up cities Will be stains of rust on mounds of plaster. Roots will not pierce the heaps for a time, kind rains will cure them, Then nothing will remain of the iron age And all these people but a thigh-bone or so, a poem Stuck in the world's thought, splinters of glass In the rubbish dumps, a concrete dam far off in the mountain...
life long shining
You making haste on decay: not blameworthy; life is good, be it stubbornly long or suddenly A mortal splendor: meteors are not needed less than mountains: shine, perishing republic.
wings white swans
Shiva... is the only hunter that will ever catch the wild swan; The prey she will take last is the wild white swan of the beauty of things. Then she will be alone, pure destruction, achieved and supreme, Empty darkness under the death-tent wings. She will build a nest of the swan's bones and hatch a new brood, Hang new heavens with new birds, all be renewed.
hands knives people
We have to live like people in a web of knives, we mustn't reach out our hands or we get them gashed.