A meditation on old age, death, and vultures.

Published posthumously in 1963.
Jeffers Literary Properties
Stanford University Press
Reading © 2017 Kaweah

IMAGE CREDITS

Condor 34 — Don Graham
Condor 11 — U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service
Kaweah — first five frames

A brutally honest and boldly naive tribute to wounded hawks, inspired by a hawk that Robinson Jeffers and sons fed for weeks before the poet was finally compelled by sympathy to turn a gun on the bird.

© 1928 Robinson Jeffers
Jeffers Literary Properties
Stanford University Press

Reading © 2017 Kaweah

Robinson Jeffers’ depiction of the Central California Coast as a place populated by Anglo-American ranchers and a Hispanic underclass (some if not all indigenous Californians) seems probable enough, but Jeffers’ human landscape lacks the Asiatic tone of some of the key people of the coast. Tamar is a conspicuous example of this issue.

Written in Ireland
© 1931 Robinson Jeffers
Jeffers Literary Properties
Stanford University Press
Reading © 2017 Kaweah

© 1925 Robinson Jeffers
Jeffers Literary Properties
Stanford University Press
Reading © 2017 Kaweah

Published posthumously
Jeffers Literary Properties
Stanford University Press
Reading © 2017 Kaweah

"There is the trap that catches noblest spirits,..."

Perhaps the earliest example of Jeffers' doctrine of "Inhumanism." It has the immediate sound of a political sermon, but quickly turns deeply apolitical.

© 1925 Robinson Jeffers
Jeffers Literary Properties
Stanford University Press
Reading © 2017 Kaweah

The subjective influence of a gray day utterly changes the reality of the mind. Jeffers describes this not by describing the experience as subjective, but by describing the influence of the weather as objective fact.

@ 1935 Robinson Jeffers
Jeffers Literary Properties
Stanford University Press
Reading © 2017 Kaweah

Image: Honeyhouse Films