Three of Robinson Jeffers’ major trade collections are now Public Domain. Downloadable PDFs of the complete texts of these three collections can be accessed by clicking these links:
[Dear Judas and Other Poems will be added January 2025 when it becomes Public Domain.]
The dozen poems listed below offer an introductory sampler of Jeffers’ poetry. The Selected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers (Stanford University Press, 2002) offers a fuller, more comprehensive cross-section of the poetry, including the long poems which are central to his project as a poet, and the five volumes of The Collected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers (Stanford University Press, 1988-2001) is a comprehensive gathering of his work, which includes, in the fifth volume, the textual histories of the poems, transcriptions of Jeffers’ working notes and discarded passages, and other material relevant to critical and scholarly explorations of the poetry. These editions also feature corrected texts.
The most widely available volume, however, is Robinson Jeffers: Selected Poetry, a slim paperback published by Vintage Books soon after Jeffers’ death. The Vintage selection reproduces the poems as originally published, however, and thus it perpetuates a number of textual errors.
from Roan Stallion, Tamar and Other Poems (1925)
Salmon Fishing
The Cycle
Point Joe
from Thurso’s Landing and Other Poems (1932)
November Surf
Fire on the Hills
from Solstice and Other Poems (1935)
Flight of Swans
from Such Counsels You Gave to Me and Other Poems (1937)
Rearmament
The Answer
Oh, Lovely Rock
from Be Angry at the Sun and Other Poems (1941)
The Day Is a Poem
from The Double Axe and Other Poems (1948)
Orca
from Last Poems
“The mathematicians and physics men…”
Please Note: the longer verse lines in some of these poems should appear correctly on a desk top screen, but phone and tablet screens may create additional breaks within verse lines. Viewing the poems landscape rather than portrait on such devices should reduce this problem but may not completely eliminate it.
The poems presented through this page are posted with the permission of Stanford University Press, and these poems should not be circulated or reproduced without securing appropriate permission from the press.