Jeffers Studies Volume 13, Numbers 1 and 2 Spring and Fall 2009 (Link to Volume 13 will be available soon)
If this double-issue of Jeffers Studies has a theme or organizing principle, it would be “Jeffers and . . . .”
Jeffers and Thoreau, Jeffers and Joseph Campbell, Jeffers and Yeats, Jeffers and contemporary poets, Jeffers and translation. Even Jeffers and Hitler, though that may be pushing it. In any case, this volume demonstrates the diversity of connections that can be made with a poet such as Jeffers—influence on and influence of, historical figures and events, international reputation and readership, and so on.
Our readers will find familiar voices in this volume: Robert Zaller, foremost, but also Deborah Fleming and Dr. Gere diZigerega, who have both previously published excellent work in these pages. We are glad to introduce a fresh perspective on our poet from J. Bradford Campbell. In addition, three poets who participated in last year’s Robinson Jeffers Association conference in Long Beach have graciously allowed us to publish their responses to Jeffers as a precursor. Here you will find Patty Seyburn’s poetic tribute to Jeffers, Kurt Brown’s insightful commentaries on Jeffers’s work, and John Ridland’s amusing “dogroll” for Jeffers and Frost. As anyone who attended the conference would attest, their reading and discussion panel were both highlights of the conference.
Jeffers and Spanish, Jeffers and Italian—the special section included here on Jeffers in translation is a first for Jeffers Studies. We are pleased to offer three examples of Gustavo Adolfo Chaves’s translations of Jeffers into Spanish. The three he chose for us are important early poems drawn from his selected translations, Fin del Continente, published in 2011. Chaves’s collection includes translations of poems from throughout Jeffers’s career, including “Roan Stallion,” as well as a Spanish version of “Poetry, Gongorism, and a Thousand Years.” The volume also includes a preface by Robert Brophy and translations of Robert Hass’s and Czesław Miłosz’s homages to Jeffers. As you will see, Ugo Gervasoni’s translations of Jeffers into Italian are works of art in themselves. Both of these translators have produced remarkable tributes to Jeffers’s appeal across national and linguistic boundaries, and we are glad to bring this work to our readers’ attention.
Rounding out this issue are reviews of two books that we think will be of interest. John Haines was a fine poet who responded deeply to Jeffers’s work, and Jack Foley’s massive survey, reviewed by my colleague Bill Mohr, provides an overview of post-Jeffers California poets. The dates on these publications, as readers will notice, are later than the date of this double-issue of Jeffers Studies. We continue to try to catch up in our publication schedule and hope that our subscribers will forgive our tardiness. As always, we are committed to publishing the best scholarly work on Jeffers and most interesting Jeffers-related material and sometimes that takes us longer that we anticipate. -George Hart