Intolerable God."
A professor of mine once lamented Jeffers'
"bitterness." I disagreed then, and disagree now. Jeffers gaze was not so much
bitter as it was unflinching, steady, resolute and sui generis. "The cold
passion for truth," he wrote, "hunts in no pack."
A prophet is without honor in his native
land, and as the years advanced he took refuge, walking the hills around Big
Sur, watching the hawks he loved. A month before the Second World War began he
wrote: "They are warming up the old horrors; and all that they say is echoes of
echoes." And, also from "The Soul's Desert": "Clearly it is time/ To become
disillusioned, each person to enter his own soul's desert/ And look for
God--having seen man."
His was the despair of a great soul, and the
hungering for beauty of a true poet: "The night herons flapping home wore dawn
on their wings."
Others could be fooled; but not Jeffers. Late
in 1943, Stalin, FDR and Churchill met in Teheran to plan the post-war peace:
"Personal greatness/ Was never more than a
trick of the light. " Who are these little smiling attendants/ On a world's
agony, meeting in Teheran to plot against whom what future?"
In the same "Teheran" poem, he foresaw the
Cold War behind the drapery:
-- there will be Russia/ And America; two
powers alone in the world; two bulls in one pasture."
few months later, in "So Many Blood-Lakes,"
he wrote:
"We have now won two world-wars, neither of
which concerned us, we were slipped in."
And, ominously:
"We have won two wars and a third is coming."
And, foreseeing our 21st Century:
"We have enjoyed fine dreams; we have dreamed
of unifying the world; we are unifying it--against us."
Concluding: -- patriotism has run the world
through so many blood-lakes: and we always fall in."
His face took on the look of the crags he
wandered; his eyes became hawk-eyes. No American poet has ever perceived his
country better: the longing for freedom and nobility; and all the traps and
losses.
Gary Corseri has posted/published his work at hundreds of websites and
publications worldwide, including OpEdNews, AlterNet, DissidentVoice,
CounterPunch, Z-Net, CommonDreams, The New York Times and The Village Voice.
His books include novels and poetry collections. His dramas have been produced
on Atlanta-PBS and elsewhere, and he has performed his work at the Carter
Presidential Library and Museum. He has taught in American prisons and public
schools and at American and Japanese universities. He can be contacted at Email address removed .
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
1
1
1
