Robinson Jeffers
Robinson Jeffers
John Robinson Jefferswas an American poet, known for his work about the central California coast. Much of Jeffers' poetry was written in narrative and epic form, but he is also known for his shorter verse and is considered an icon of the environmental movement. Influential and highly regarded in some circles, despite or because of his philosophy of "inhumanism," Jeffers believed that transcending conflict required human concerns to be de-emphasized in favor of the boundless whole. This led him to...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth10 January 1887
CityPittsburgh, PA
CountryUnited States of America
It is good for man To try all changes, progress and corruption, powers, peace and anguish, not to go down the dinosaur's way Until all his capacities have been explored: and it is good for him To know that his needs and nature are no more changed, in fact, in ten thousand years than the beaks of eagles.
Look how noble the world is, the lonely-flowing waters, the secret-keeping stones, the flowing sky.
What but the wolf's tooth whittled so fine The fleet limbs of the antelope?What but fear winged the birds, and hunger Jewelled with such eyes the great goshawk's head?
Cruelty is a part of nature, at least of human nature, but it is the one thing that seems unnatural to us.
Poetry is not a civilizer, rather the reverse, for great poetry appeals to the most primitive instincts.
The world's in a bad way, my man, And bound to be worse before it mends; Better lie up in the mountain here Four or five centuries, While the stars go over the lonely ocean.
It seems to me that this whole alone is worthy of the deeper sort of love; and that there is peace, freedom, I might say a kind of salvation, in turning one's affections outward toward this one God, rather than inwards on one's self, or on humanity, or on human imaginations and abstractions - the world of the spirits.
civilization is a transient sickness.
Meteors are not needed less than mountains: shine, perishing republic.
The tides are in our veins.
The cold passion for truth hunts in no pack.
The greatest beauty is organic wholeness, the wholeness of life and things, the divine beauty of the universe.
There is no reason for amazement: surely one always knew that cultures decay, and life's end is death.
We have to live like people in a web of knives, we mustn't reach out our hands or we get them gashed.