An episode from 9/23/22: What twentieth-century American poet devoted so much time to the environment, and to humanity’s place in it, other than Robinson Jeffers (1887-1962)? What other poet devoted his powers not to the puzzles of Modernism but to the plain-spoken strengths of science, prophecy, and myth? Tonight I read ten of Jeffers’ essential poems, and I hope you are as stunned by them as I always am. The poems are:
- The Excesses of God
- Point Joe
- Hooded Night
- New Mexican Mountain
- Nova
- from Hungerfield
- De Rerum Virtute
- Vulture
- “I am seventy-four years old and suddenly all my strength”
- Inscription for a Gravestone
- The episode ends with a 1941 Library of Congress recording of Jeffers reading his poem, “Natural Music.”
You can support Human Voices Wake Us here, or by ordering any of my books: Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone. I’ve also edited a handful of books in the S4N Pocket Poems series.
Email me at humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com.

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