"Continent's End" in Tamar and Other Poems (1924)
Kontext: The long migrations meet across you and it is nothing to you, you have forgotten us, mother.
You were much younger when we crawled out of the womb and lay in the sun’s eye on the tideline. It was long and long ago; we have grown proud since then and you have grown bitter; life retains
Your mobile soft unquiet strength; and envies hardness, the insolent quietness of stone.
Robinson Jeffers:
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“Before there was any water there were tides of fire, both our tones flow from the older fountain.”
"Continent's End" in Tamar and Other Poems (1924)
Kontext: Mother, though my song's measure is like your surf-beat's ancient rhythm I never learned it of you.
Before there was any water there were tides of fire, both our tones flow from the older fountain.
"The Answer" (1936)
Kontext: Know that however ugly the parts appear
the whole remains beautiful. A severed hand
Is an ugly thing and man dissevered from the earth and stars
and his history... for contemplation or in fact...
Often appears atrociously ugly. Integrity is wholeness,
the greatest beauty is
Organic wholeness, the wholeness of life and things, the divine beauty
of the universe. Love that, not man
Apart from that, or else you will share man's pitiful confusions,
or drown in despair when his days darken.
Letter to a group of Occidental College students (1955)
Kontext: When I first went to Occidental College... there was a literary magazine... called the Aurora, and I remember thinking it odd that Occidental — the west, the setting sun — should be represented by a magazine called Aurora, the dawn. At least it gave us a wide range, the whole daylight sky.
I was continually writing verses in those days. Nobody, not even I myself, thought they were good verses; but Aurora's editor accepted many of them and it gave me pleasure to see my rhymes in print. They did rhyme, if that is any value, and were usually metrical, but why was I so eager to publish what hardly anyone would read and no one would remember? I suppose the desire for publication is a normal part of the instinct for writing... the writer sits at home, and the mere fact of being printed provides his verses with a kind of audience... So, having his vanity partially satisfied, he can go ahead and try better work.
"The Answer" (1936)
Kontext: Then what is the answer? — Not to be deluded by dreams.
To know that great civilizations have broken down into violence, and their tyrants come, many times before.
When open violence appears, to avoid it with honor or choose the least ugly faction; these evils are essential.
To keep one's own integrity, be merciful and uncorrupted and not wish for evil; and not be duped
By dreams of universal justice or happiness. These dreams will not be fulfilled.
"Love the Wild Swan" (1935)
Kontext: This wild swan of a world is no hunter's game.
Better bullets than yours would miss the white breast
Better mirrors than yours would crack in the flame.
Does it matter whether you hate your... self?
At least Love your eyes that can see, your mind that can
Hear the music, the thunder of the wings. Love the wild swan.
"The Eye"
“Meteors are not needed less than mountains:
shine, perishing republic.”
"Shine, Perishing Republic" (1939)
“I decided not to tell lies in verse. Not to feign any emotions that I did not feel.”
The Selected Poems of Robinson Jeffers, Stanford University Press (2001) ISBN 978-0804738903
“I sadly smiling remember that the flower fades to make fruit, the fruit rots
to make earth.”
"Shine, Perishing Republic" (1939)
"Apology for Bad Dreams" in The Women at Point Sur (1927)
Preface to The Double Axe and Other Poems (1948)
"Continent's End" in Tamar and Other Poems (1924)
“Here is a symbol in which
Many high tragic thoughts
Watch their own eyes.”
"Rock and Hawk" in Solstice and Other Poems (1935)
Response in a pamphlet Writers Take Sides : Letters About the War in Spain from 418 American Authors (1938) by the American Writers League, which asked various authors: "Are you for or are you against Franco and fascism?".
“Happy people die whole, they are all dissolved in a moment,
they have had what they wanted”
"Post Mortem" in The Women at Point Sur (1927)
“Poetry is bound to concern itself chiefly with permanent aspects of life.”
As quoted in Encyclopedia of World Literature in the 20th Century (1981) edited by Leonard S. Klein, Vol. 2, p. 504
"Contemplation of The Sword" (1938)
"Summer Holiday"
" To The Stone-Cutters http://www.tnellen.com/cybereng/poetry/stone.html" in Tamar and Other Poems (1924)