The Poems of Robinson Jeffers with George Hart

“To feel/Greatly, and understand greatly, and express greatly, the natural/Beauty, is the sole business of Poetry”—Robinson Jeffers’ “The Beauty of Things”

For Episode 9 of the Lit Matters Podcast, Chris is joined by California State University of Long Beach Professor, George Hart to discuss one of California’s most important…and forgotten poets, Robinson Jeffers. Stone-mason, naturalists, scandalous recluse, and foreboding prophet of “Inhumanism,” Jeffers composed so many beautiful poems while overlooking the majestic power of the Pacific Ocean and building a three story tower of granite by hand. 

Suggested Works by and About Robinson Jeffers:

• The Wild God of the World: An Anthology of Robinson Jeffers, edited by Albert Gelpi
• Jeffers’ 1948 New York Timesarticle, “Poetry, Gongorism, and a Thousand Years” at https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1948/01/18/96585266.html?pageNumber=170
• Robinson Jeffers’ Cawdor and Medea: A Long Poem after Medea
• Robinson Jeffers: Selected Poems
• Professor George Hart’s Inventing the Language to Tell It: Robinson Jeffers and the Biology of Consciousness

Information on visiting Robinson Jeffers’ Carmel, California home, Tor House can be found at https://www.torhouse.org/