Robinson Jeffers

Today, we belatedly note the birth date of Robinson Jeffers, (Jan. 10, 1887—Jan. 20, 1962), one of the most controversial U.S. poets of the 20th century, for whom all things except his pantheistically conceived God are transient, and human life is viewed as a frantic, often contemptible struggle within a net of passions.

Known for his work about the central California coast, much of Jeffers's poetry was written in narrative and epic form. However, he is also known for his shorter verse and is considered an icon of the environmental movement.

Jeffers's 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 coined the word "inhumanism": the belief that humankind is too self-centered and too indifferent to the "astonishing beauty of things."

Here is one of his poems for your consideration:

Mountain Pines

In scornful upright loneliness they stand,
Counting themselves no kin of anything
Whether of earth or sky. Their gnarled roots cling
Like wasted fingers of a clutching hand
In the grim rock. A silent spectral band
They watch the old sky, but hold no communing
With aught. Only, when some lone eagle's wing
Flaps past above their grey and desolate land,
Or when the wind pants up a rough-hewn glen,
Bending them down as with an age of thought,
Or when, ‘mid flying clouds that can not dull
Her constant light, the moon shines silver, then
They find a soul, and their dim moan is wrought
Into a singing sad and beautiful.
--Robinson Jeffers