The wild that attracts us : new critical essays on Robinson Jeffers

The first collection in twenty years of essays on Robinson Jeffers, one of the great American poets of the twentieth century, this work signals the sea change in Jeffers scholarship, as well as the increasing breadth and depth of criticism of the literature of the American West. The essays assembled here highlight issues and theories critical to Jeffers studies, among them the advance of ecocriticism, the reimagining of regionalism as place studies, the continuing development of cultural studies and the new historicism, the increasingly poignant vector of science and literature, the new formalism, particularly as it pertains to narrative verse, and the glaring omission of feminist analysis in Jeffers scholarship. Jeffers has always appealed to a wider audience than many twentieth-century poets, and this book will speak to that general readership as well as to scholars and students. Front Cover 1 Title Page 4 Copyright 5 Contents 8 Illustrations 10 Acknowledgments 12 Introduction: “The wild that attracts us”—in the World and on the Page / ShaunAnne Tangney 14 1: Robinson Jeffers and the Contemplation of Consciousness / Christopher Damien 32 2: The Neurasthenic Logic of Robinson Jeffers’s Antiurbanism / J. Bradford Campbell 56 3: Constructed Witness: The Drama of Presence in Jeffers’s Lyric Voice / Tim Hunt 72 4: Jeffers, Pessimism, and Time / Robert Zaller 96 5: Knocking Our Heads to Pieces against the Night: Going Cosmic with Robinson Jeffers / Anthony Lioi 148 6: “The mould to break away from”: An Ecofeminist Reading of “Roan Stallion” / ShaunAnne Tangney 172 7: Praxis, Gnosis, Poiesis: Inhabitation as Performative Myth in Thoreau and Jeffers / Bryon Williams 192 8: Jeffers’s 1907 Hike in the San Bernardino Mountains: A Closer Look / Robert Kafka 224 9: The Warm Reception of Robinson Jeffers’s Poetry in Cold War Czechoslovakia / Petr Kopecký 254 10: Robinson Jeffers, Translation, and the Return of Narrative / David J. Rothman 286 Contributors 320 Index 324 Back Cover 342 Content: Robinson Jeffers and the Contemplation of Consciousness / Christopher Damien -- The Neurasthenic Logic of Robinson Jeffers's Antiurbanism / J. Bradford Campbell -- Constructed Witness: The Drama of Presence in Jeffers's Lyric Voice / Tim Hunt -- Jeffers, Pessimism, and Time / Robert Zaller -- Knocking Our Heads to Pieces against the Night: Going Cosmic with Robinson Jeffers / Anthony Lioi -- "The mould to break away from": An Ecofeminist Reading of "Roan Stallion" / ShaunAnne Tangney -- Praxis, Gnosis, Poiesis: Inhabitation as Performative Myth in Thoreau and Jeffers / Bryon Williams -- Jeffers's 1907 Hike in the San Bernardino Mountains: A Closer Look / Robert Kafka -- The Warm Reception of Robomspm Jeffers's Poetry in Cold War Czechoslovakia / Petr Kopecky -- Robinson Jeffers, Translation, and the Return of Narrative / David J. Rothman.