Although closely associated with the California coast, Jeffers was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and spent much of his boyhood at boarding schools in Europe. His father, a stern Presbyterian minister and professor of the Old Testament, trained Robinson in Greek and Latin. Once shunned for his unpopular political views and harsh critiques of mankind’s egotism, Robinson Jeffers has regained popularity in recent years as environmentalism’s most forceful poet-advocate. His uncompromising work celebrates the enduring beauty of sea, sky and stone and the freedom and ferocity of wild animals in contrast to human pettiness, meddling and greed.
More By This Poet
The Bloody Sire
It is not bad. Let them play.
Let the guns bark and the bombing-plane
Speak his prodigious blasphemies.
It is not bad, it is high time,
Stark violence is still the sire of all the world’s values.
What but the wolf’s tooth whittled so fine
The...