Robinson Jeffers

Robinson Jeffers (1887-1962), American poet and dramatist, whose powerful and eloquent verse expresses his contempt for human society, which he regarded as doomed by its own violence and depravity. Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Jeffers was educated privately in the classics. He graduated from Occidental College and then studied medicine and forestry. After 1914 Jeffers and his family lived in solitude on California's mountainous Monterey coast.

Jeffers gave classical and biblical stories a California setting. The poem “The Tower Beyond Tragedy” (based on two plays by the Greek dramatist Aeschylus), from Tamar and Other Poems (1924), is often considered his best work. Later volumes included Roan Stallion (1925), The Women at Point Sur (1927), Cawdor (1928), Dear Judas (1929), and Thurso's Landing (1932). In Give Your Heart to the Hawks (1933) he expressed his belief that, in order to survive, humans must transcend their humanity by adopting either the stolidity of stones or the solitude of hawks.

With his uncompromising reverence for nonhuman values and his World War II (1939-1945) isolationism, Jeffers fell out of favor. Yet his adaptation of the tragedy Medea (1946), by the Greek dramatist Euripides, with the American actor Dame Judith Anderson in the title role, proved to be a great success. Jeffers's later volumes of poetry include The Double Axe and Other Poems (1948) and Hungerfield and Other Poems (1954).