The Practice of Poetry

“Coming back to Jeffers after a long absence is like getting kicked in the gut,” Carolyn Kizer states in her essay called “A Note on Robinson Jeffers” (93). In the essay, she analyzes a handful of passages of Jeffers’ work which are harsh, violent, and inhumanistic but girded by “rolling orotund phrases” and “luminous alliteration” (95, 92).

To illustrate the great difference between the dark bent of the poems and the musicality, she tells how her mother used to read her Jeffers when she was very young; they were lulled hypnotically by the rhythm and rhyme, enough so that the harsh content slipped past both her and her mother with unbothersome ease. She concludes her note by admitting “It is hard not to wish that Jeffers had not hated mankind so fiercely, to the point where it deforms parts of his most distinguished work. But we have the rest, the dozens of beautiful shorter poems…” (95). “Deforms” is an intriguing word choice; she is saying Jeffers purposely mutilated the inherent symmetry and grain of poetry. As she follows up with “we have the rest…” it accepts the inhumanism in some of his work because there is much work that is easier to handle.

I wonder though, if her reaction is simply part of the grimace reaction from getting kicked in the gut. It’s true: Jeffers’ reviling voice can make me grind my teeth with complete dis-ease. But it seems important that now, as we must change our perspectives on what we value and consider ethical living in order to sustain life, we should be taking extra care with our assumptions. Jeffers’ sucker-punches are upsetting, but our desire for the little lovelies that he wrote might simply reveal our implicit acceptance of the common philosophy that literature “is reaching for the human element” as Chris Abani said in a recent, brilliant lecture at the Port Townsend Writers Conference. This is an anthropocentric notion that elides the forceful de-centering Jeffers so ardently (and harshly) sought. Maybe he was a man out of time, better suited for the more angry—and scared—listeners today, the ones worried about the quality of life for their children, the ones not having children out of fear for what sea changes may soon make unbearable living conditions. It’s true, Jeffers makes for uncomfortable reading, but to disregard the ugliest parts of his rhetoric in preference of the lyric moments seems to be similar to turning off the volume of the television when George W. is talking, and just contemplating how nice his hair looks.

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