Robinson Jeffers (1887-1962) is not only the greatest poet that
California (and indeed the American West) has produced but a major poet
of the twentieth century who occupies a prominent place in the tradition
of American prophetic poetry.
Jeffers consciously set himself apart from the poetry of his
generation--by physical isolation at his home in Carmel, by his unusual
poetic form, and by his stance as an "anti-modernist." Yet his work
represents a profound, and profoundly original, artistic response to
problems that shaped modernist poetry and that still perplex poets
today. Now, for the first time, all of Jeffers's completed poems, both
published and unpublished, are presented in a single, comprehensive, and
textually authoritative edition of five volumes.
The present volume is in four parts. An Introduction deals with the
scope and principles of selection for the edition, including the
decision to present the poems in chronological order, and gives a brief
review of the textual evidence and commentary that form the bulk of this
volume. The essay "Chronology" offers an overview of Jeffers's career,
the evidence for dating the poems, and the arguments drawn from that
evidence.
The two parts that follow describe the rationale and evidence for
establishing the texts of the poems for this edition, and present, in
the form of extensive commentary and tabulations for each poem, the
material (notes, preliminary workings, revisions, discarded passages,
and variations in published versions) that both complicate and enrich
the study of Jeffers's poetry and prose. These commentaries also
incorporate a number of additional selections from Jeffers's previously
unpublished writings.
There are three appendixes: tables of contents for original editions as
well as some planned editions that were never published; poems (not
included in this edition) that have appeared in posthumous compilations;
and errata for the first four volumes. The book concludes with two
indexes, of titles and of first lines.
