Robinson Jeffers: Selected Poems

An episode from 4/30/21: Here is a collection of all of the recordings I've made of the poetry of Robinson Jeffers from November of 2020 until this month. Jeffers' collected poetry spans three huge volumes, and nearly every individual collection included a narrative poem alongside the shorter lyrics. While Jeffers seemed to have believed that his reputation would rest on these longer poems, none of them (at least for me) come near matching the power that he is able to achieve in his shorter poems. It is easy to define him by his "inhumanist" philosophy, or to pigeon-hole him as a merely "Californian" or "ecological" poet, but no labels can contain what Jeffers was able to do with language.

Find all of these poems in The Collected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers, or the ⁠The Selected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers⁠.

Tamar (1920-1923)

• The Excesses of God
• Age in Prospect
• To the Rock that Will Be a Cornerstone of the House
• Point Joe

Roan Stallion (1924-1925)

• Birds
• Boats in a Fog
• Joy

The Women at Point Sur (1925-1926)

• Post Mortem
• Pelicans
• excerpt from Credo

Cawdor (1926-1928)

• Tor House

Dear Judas (1928-1929)

• Hooded Night
• excerpt from Ossian's Grave
• Antrim
• Inscription for a Gravestone
• Subjected Earth
• Second Best

Thurso's Landing (1930-1931)

• New Mexican Mountain

Give Your Heart to the Hawks (1931-1933)

• Still the Mind Smiles

Such Counsels You Gave to Me (1935-1938)

• Nova
• Contemplation of the Sword
• Shiva

The Double Axe (1942-1947)

• Original Sin

Hungerfield (1948-1953)

• Animals
• Time of Disturbance
• The Beauty of Things
• The World's Wonders
• The Old Stone-Mason
• excerpt from Hungerfield
• De Rerum Virtute
• The Deer Lay Down Their Bones

Last Poems (1953-1962)

• Explosion
• Vulture
• "The polar ice-caps are melting"
• "As the eye fails"
• "It nearly cancels my fear of death"
• "I am seventy-four years old"

Don’t forget to support Human Voices Wake Us on Substack, where you can also get our newsletter and other extras. You can also support the podcast by ordering any of my books: Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone.

Any comments, or suggestions for readings I should make in later episodes, can be emailed to [email protected].