Robinson Jeffers

John Robinson Jeffers (Allegheny, 1887 - Carmel-by-the-Sea, 1962) was an American poet whose work is tied to the central coast of California. He wrote mostly long narrative poems in an epic vein, though he also published shorter verse. Today he is considered a forerunner of ecopoetry and an icon of the environmental movement, since he placed the natural world, rather than humanity, at the center of his verse.

He grew up between Pennsylvania and Europe. His father was a Presbyterian minister and scholar of ancient languages, and the young Jeffers was reading German and French by the age of twelve, after schooling in Germany, France and Switzerland. He took a degree in Los Angeles and tried several fields, including medicine and forestry, without finishing any of them. After a love affair with Una Call Kuster became a public scandal, the two married in 1913 and settled in Carmel in 1914. There he built Tor House with his own hands, learning stonemasonry from a local builder, and later raised a stone tower beside it.

In the 1920s he published long narrative poems such as Tamar, which dealt with violence and taboo subjects like incest and parricide and drew both admirers and critics. He rejected the idea that meter was essential to poetry and described his lines as "rolling stresses." During the Second World War he opposed American participation, a stance that was controversial. His 1948 collection The Double Axe was partly suppressed by his publisher because of its anti-war poems. He coined the word "inhumanism" to describe a view that moves human concerns away from the center of things.

His reputation grew after his death. A 1977 edition restored the suppressed poems, and writers such as Gary Snyder and Edward Abbey acknowledged his influence. His poems have been translated into many languages, and his name is now linked with ecological thought.