James Karman

Out of print for many years, James Karman's Robinson Jeffers, Poet of California has been revised and expanded for this new edition. Karman takes us into the mythic life of Jeffers and his family as they build their own house on a desolate, rocky point at Carmel-By-The-Sea, where they carved out a life that honored hard work, self-reliance and the environment.

Poet of California

Robinson Jeffers

A selection of book reviews, articles, and essays that run the gamut from glorification to deprecation, all the more remarkable in that the selections were chosen for their representativeness and, in the case of reviews, to reveal the response Jeffers (1887-1962) received as his books appeared. Karm

Critical Essays on Robinson Jeffers

The precipitous cliffs, rolling headlands, and rocky inlets of the California coast come alive in the poetry of John Robinson Jeffers, an icon of the environmental movement. In this concise and accessible biography, Jeffers scholar James Karman reveals deep insights into this passionate and complex figure and establishes Jeffers as a leading American poet of prophetic vision. In a move that would define his life's work, Jeffers' family relocated to California from Pennsylvania in 1903 when he was sixteen. While a graduate student at the University of Southern California he met Una Call Kuster, a student who was the wife of a prominent Los Angeles attorney, and they began a scandalous affair that made the front page of the Los Angeles Times. They eventually married and escaped to Carmel, California to write poetry; there they would spend the rest of their lives. At the height of his popularity in the 1920s and 1930s, Jeffers became one of the few poets ever featured on the cover of Time magazine, and posthumously put on a U.S. postage stamp. Writing by kerosene lamp in a granite tower that he had built himself, his vivid and descriptive poetry of the coast evoked the difficulty and beauty of the wild and inspired photographers such as Edward Weston and Ansel Adams. He was known for long narrative blank verse that shook up the national literary scene, but in the 1940s his interest in the Greek classics led to several adaptations which were staged on Broadway to great success. Inspiring later artists from Charles Bukowski to Czeslaw Milosz and even the Beach Boys, Robinson Jeffers' contribution to American letters is skillfully brought back out of the shadows of history in this compelling biography of a complex man of poetic genius who wrote so powerfully of the astonishing beauty of nature.

Poet and Prophet

This volume of correspondence, the last in a three-volume edition, spans a pivotal moment in American history: the mid-twentieth century, from the beginning of World War II, through the years of rebuilding and uneasy peace that followed, to the election of President John F. Kennedy. Robinson Jeffers published four important books during this period—Be Angry at the Sun (1941), Medea (1946), The Double Axe (1948), and Hungerfield (1954). He also faced changes to his hometown village of Carmel, experienced the rewards of being a successful dramatist in the United States and abroad, and endured the loss of his wife Una. Jeffers' letters, and those of Una written in the decade prior to her death, offer a vivid chronicle of the life and times of a singular and visionary poet.

Volume Three, 1940-1962

The Collected Letters of Robinson Jeffers, with Selected Letters of Una Jeffers

Una Jeffers

This three-volume work provides a comprehensive, fully annotated edition of Robinson and Una Jeffers' correspondence; Volume I contains letters written between 1890 and 1930.

With Selected Letters of Una Jeffers

The Collected Letters of Robinson Jeffers

The 1930s marked a turning point for the world. Scientific and technological revolutions, economic and social upheavals, and the outbreak of war changed the course of history. The 1930s also marked a turning point for Robinson Jeffers, both in his career as a poet and in his private life. The letters collected in this second volume of annotated correspondence document Jeffers' rising fame as a poet, his controversial response to the turmoil of his time, his struggles as a writer, the growth and maturation of his twin sons, and the network of friends and acquaintances that surrounded him. The letters also provide an intimate portrait of Jeffers' relationship to his wife Una—including a full account of the 1938 crisis at Mabel Dodge Luhan's home in Taos, New Mexico that nearly destroyed their marriage.

Volume Two, 1931–1939

Morley Baer

The precipitous cliffs, rolling headlands, and rocky inlets of the Big Sur coast of California prompted Robinson Jeffers to extol their wild beauty throughout his long career as a poet. This extraordinary volume brings together Jeffers’s haunting poetry with magnificent photographs of Big Sur by his friend and neighbor, famed photographer Morley Baer.

James Karman

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