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Life Arts    H4'ed 5/13/13

Robinson Jeffers: America's Neglected-At-Our-Peril Poet-Prophet

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"Visionless men, blind hearts, blind mouths, live still."

And:

"As to betrayals: there are so many

Betrayals, the Russians and the Germans know."

He was writing, of course, about the infamous Versailles Treaty, when Wilson had the rug pulled out from under him, his noble "14 Points" bartered for the scurrilous "peace" Britain and France exacted from no-more war-guilty Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottomans and Russia.

"Victory/ you know requires

Force to sustain victory, the burden is never lightened. --

1924. " 2013. " The "Great War" then. The "War on Terror" now. "The burden is never lightened."

The Depression deepened. Top-hatted Fred Astaire whirled sparkling Ginger Rogers and the masses escaped into a celluloid realm of riches; and behind it all, more clamoring for war. In 1938, in "Shine, Republic," he takes his earlier poem a warier step further: "The love of freedom has been the quality of Western man," he proclaims. And, "you, America, that passion made you. You were not born to prosperity, you were born to love freedom." And, "we cannot have all the luxuries and freedom also."

That same year, a year after Picasso's "Guernica" had vivified the torturous horrors of the Spanish Civil War, Jeffers wrote in "Contemplation of the Sword": "Reason will not decide at last; the sword will decide." Increasingly, his father's faith wavered in him. He called his own philosophy/religion "inhumanism," focussing on his belief that "the man-brained and man-handed ground ape" was far too self-absorbed "to feel/ Greatly, and understand greatly, and express greatly, the natural/ Beauty." An earlier age might have called him a pagan. But his was no blind, Romanticist faith in the beauty of Nature. More like humble awe before infinite mysteries. With world war approaching again, he writes:

"Dear God, who are the whole splendor of things and the/ sacred stars, but also the cruelty and greed, the/ treacheries/ And vileness, insanities and filth and anguish: now that this thing comes near us again I am finding it hard

To praise you."

And, in the same poem:

"You are the one that tortures himself to discover himself: I am

One that watches you and discovers you, and praises you

in little parables, idyl or tragedy, beautiful

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Gary Corseri has published & posted his work at hundreds of venues worldwide, including Op Ed News, The New York Times, CounterPunch, CommonDreams, DissidentVoice, L.A. (and Hollywood--) Progressive. He has been a professor in the US & Japan, has (more...)
 
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