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The Wild God of the World: An Anthology of Robinson Jeffers by Robinson Jeffers, Albert Gelpi
ikahime's review against another edition
1.0
I was drawn to this book because of the poems of his quoted by the folks at the Dark Mountain project, but this collection really rubbed me the wrong way. Yet another privileged white man writing who just doesn't seem to get it (the nature he professes to loving, women in general). He talks to his cornerstone as though it should consider itself lucky to be part of his house. The presumption! I chugged thru it and am glad to have it out of my house.
hilaritas's review
2.0
Jeffers is, frankly, exhausting. Not that his poems or prose are hard to read (they're all pretty straightforward, and all deal with a very circumscribed set of images and concepts), but he's like the guy you get stuck with at a dinner party and you just can't wait to escape. He's simultaneously self-pitying, egotistical, and self-loathing. He's incessantly prattling on about how humans and their value systems ain't no good, and exhorting us all to turn only to the inhuman and bloody sublimity of nature for a "beyond good and evil" appreciation of reality. But he's doing so in poetry informed exclusively by human conceptions of beauty! And according to Jeffers, poetry is at best a distraction from real sublimity, and at worst a lie that tells you life has meaning when it doesn't, at least beyond the churn and fury of the life-cycle. Doesn't sound like he picked the right career, huh?
Further, he has married his metaphysical viewpoint to very strong prescriptivist moralizing. If you don't think like him, you're Doing It Wrong. All those modernist or symbolist poets writing about stuff other than the inhuman majesty of nature? They're Gongorists and Doing It Wrong. All those people who don't live on the California coast and spend their days thinking about the nobility of birds of prey? Yep, Doing It Wrong. So what is Right? Being a tough guy who stomps around building houses out of stone instead of Feeling Feelings. If you feel sad about something, you should just pack it down deep in your manly chest and instead thank the Materialist God that granite will outlast you and your cares. Jeffers spends a lot of time pouting about how life is a hard and brutal thing and the clear-eyed realist will love it only for that, but it feels an awfully lot like someone trying to convince himself. Jeffers leaves no room for a transcendent experience outside nature, nor even for a Spinozist god beyond but immanent within reality.
Ultimately, the emotion he most evoked in me while reading this was pity. It sounds miserable to be Robinson Jeffers. I did appreciate some of the poems for their plain-spoken beauty, and for the opportunity to spend time with a viewpoint quite different from my own. But this collection of works is probably better suited for a Clint Eastwood type than me.
Further, he has married his metaphysical viewpoint to very strong prescriptivist moralizing. If you don't think like him, you're Doing It Wrong. All those modernist or symbolist poets writing about stuff other than the inhuman majesty of nature? They're Gongorists and Doing It Wrong. All those people who don't live on the California coast and spend their days thinking about the nobility of birds of prey? Yep, Doing It Wrong. So what is Right? Being a tough guy who stomps around building houses out of stone instead of Feeling Feelings. If you feel sad about something, you should just pack it down deep in your manly chest and instead thank the Materialist God that granite will outlast you and your cares. Jeffers spends a lot of time pouting about how life is a hard and brutal thing and the clear-eyed realist will love it only for that, but it feels an awfully lot like someone trying to convince himself. Jeffers leaves no room for a transcendent experience outside nature, nor even for a Spinozist god beyond but immanent within reality.
Ultimately, the emotion he most evoked in me while reading this was pity. It sounds miserable to be Robinson Jeffers. I did appreciate some of the poems for their plain-spoken beauty, and for the opportunity to spend time with a viewpoint quite different from my own. But this collection of works is probably better suited for a Clint Eastwood type than me.
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