Robinson Jeffers: Fire from Stone

20th Century poet.  Mystic of stone and the working of stone.  Eco-prophet.


By the spring of 1924, Robinson Jeffers, age 37, may have been known as much for his stonemasonry as for his poetry.   He’d published a mediocre volume of regional interest eight years earlier, and since then he’d seen only rejection from the publishers.  He’d recently printed, at his own expense, some 450 copies of his latest book and stuffed them in the eaves of his attic.


Jeffers’ luck — and the face of American verse — was about to change. The Book Club of California was soliciting submissions for a new anthology of California poetry.  When they found Jeffers, he replied with a few short poems and a copy of his little attic stuffer. The print quality was poor. The text was hard to see.  It roiled with dark beauty, sublime violence, fire.