Robinson Jeffers On The Other Hand example essay topic

The Nature of Man by Robinson Jeffers Robinson Jeffers is one of the twentieth centuries most important and controversial poets. He, like others in history, has tried to give his opinion about life. Many poets in the twentieth century focused on issues affecting mankind, Jeffers is no exception. Most of his work was inspired by his surroundings. One's environment is great source for poetic inspiration.

Poets come and go, but their ideas are kept alive through their poems. Whether they are a hundred or ten years old, these poems hold ideas in them which are still interesting now as they were back then. It seems that poets are always passionate about their work. They should be, since it expresses who they are and what they believe in through writing. One tends to write about what one knows or feels one might know.

Feelings control our mind and our mind controls our actions. How we feel can be determined by external forces. Sometimes, one lets emotions run wild which can cause our work to be accepted or rejected by others. One must not worry about writing something which might cause a brush off by society. However, writings such as these can create a cold shoulder for one's future work.

Then again, poetry is used to express oneself. Society will only encourage radical behavior to continue and who knows, one's ideas might generate a fan base. A poet cannot please everyone. There are some emotions which will be seen as pleasant ideas and some which will seem disrespectful. Poetry, that is controversial, seems to captivate an audience and it accomplishes one's lofty goals. One's courageous work commands respect, whether the reader agrees with the ideas or not.

Poems are intended to force the audience to see one's views. Though the reader's views often contradict your own, the most important part is to make them consider new ideas and better understand the issues. Although, many of issues will never be understood. Poets often tend to write openly about this. Man is involved with everything in this world. Mankind as a whole has progressed in knowledge and technology.

In other areas, on the other hand, it has stayed the same or has gotten worst. Poets for centuries have written about man. Few, have written using facts. Yet more have written using their opinions. Thousands of books have been written about man, but the one's that stand out are the one's society tends to reject.

We do not needs these books to know what is in them, because we see it with our eyes. However, it is much easier to read about man and do nothing, than to see it and do nothing. One should be aware of the freedom expressing one's convictions boldly and forthrightly. Whether it is about mankind or not. Positive or negative ideas are always shown.

They can uplift the human spirit or condemn it. Society picks out individual ideas and throws away what might seem too radical. One must wonder why. Is there something we need to know, who knows. It seems that in a country were freedom of speech is promoted, it is also taken away. On must push forward for new knowledge.

Whether it comes from societies rejected ideas or not. Poems can be or are the most pure form of expression. It can do many marvelous things to man. From narrative poetry to the other forms of it, truth matters in poetry. One wonders if artistic truth has limitations, and how do other forms of truth stand up.

Poetry is language organized to aesthetic purposes. Like a bar of music, a phrase in a poem has the power to immediately call up whole ranges of possibilities and expectations. All poets borrow, but where good poets improve on their borrowing, the bad diminish. Much of what is published today is to the interest of the public reader for entertainment. Poets must therefore understand their business of what they want to do, and the price they have to pay. Does one write merely to entertain or does one write to show forms of personal expressions.

This decision should be based on the way the poet wants to bee seen. Poetry comes in many forms. Much has come form schools, creative writing courses, and even prison. There are no real recipe or instructions for a good poem so no matter where you are; poetry is always a way of escape. An important factor to remember is that poetry is a calling not a career and only adolescents strut around as wannabe poets. Despite exhortation, hype, and extensive funding poetry is no longer the queen of the arts.

It has a minority status which is worthy but is not courted by publishers or the media as it once did. Poetry is still the workshop of language and things that can be explored. It's still the innovative, exciting, and significant of today's writings. Contributing to it is to join a selected community and it ensures ones kinship with writers of the past.

To truly belong with them, one must look at their work. Then ask how it is similar or different from one's own. Earlier writers wrote controversial and non-controversial topics. Distinguishing oneself from others is a very important stop for self promotion. Writers who stick with one form of writing are not as popular that those who take risk. If one's work is to be expressed then one has to stand up for it while others might reject it.

That is when a true poet shows out. They do not crumble under harsh criticism. There are some topics which are off limits to some but if you believe strongly for it, or against it, then stand up and express what it is one has to say. As I've said earlier, society will disown you if need be but one must not lose focus on the main goals on is trying to accomplish. Mankind for example, is a topic of distinct attributes. Poets write about life, love, and romanticism in general.

Although, poets never tend to write about ideas, which are not so great towards man. Poems which include tragedy always tend to have some type of twist at the end, making man seem honorable. It becomes a love poem or a comedy. This is what society has accepted. However, what about the ideas and works of man society has rejected. Do we ignore them?

Poets have strayed from telling what could be true about man. Robinson Jeffers on the other hand has not. He stays strong no matter what the criticism. Jeffers has taken heat for his work but he stood by it to the very end. He has been able to express an promote his ideas like few poets in history have been able to. Therefore, Robinson Jeffers expresses the nature of man through religion, corruption, and human frailties.

Robinson Jeffers has a reputation as a bitter and misanthropic poet. Misanthropic, is defined as a hatred or mistrustful scorn for mankind. Subordinate themes in Jeffers's poetry show the truth of human instability, confrontation of pain, and the acceptance of God on his own terms. In 'Apology for Bad Dreams,' an early poem in lyric form, Jeffers indicates that he creates his narratives and dramas principally for his own salvation. Using the vignette of a woman beating a horse amidst the magnificence of a coastal sundown, he attempts to reconcile man's perversity with the essential beauty of things. There are other writers, Jeffers tells us in the prelude to the poem, who will tell tales to entertain.

However, his vocation is to slit open the eye holes in mankind's mask. Human resistance to God and integration into the universe, can be broken only by dramatic means. Jeffers was a known pantheist who believed that God and the universe are the same. In describing his Pantheism, Jeffers wrote 'I believe that the universe is one being, all its parts are different expressions of the same energy... parts of one organic whole... this is physics, I believe, as well as religion". For him, being involves change which is brought only by violence and pain because each form resists its own dissolution. These realities, though commonly repulsive to man, are essential to beauty and divinity.

For Jeffers, there is only matter and energy; there is no spirit, or soul, or immortality. God endures forever; man is a temporary phenomenon, something of an anomaly in the universe because of his obsession with self-worth. Man is also unique, in that he is able to reflect on God. In fact, man is one of God's sense organs. God himself is in no way like man. Man is savage, indifferent, and wild, encompassing both good and evil.

(Rock and Hawk) If seen entirely, all things are sacred and in harmony to man. Jeffers task of living a good life lies principally in the separation from insane desires for power, wealth, and permanence. One must seek wisdom, peace, and perseverance. Things that can create emotions which are considered evil in the eyes of God, will only lead to a life of immorality and sin.

Man must learn that greed and ultimate power will not insure you a place with the lord. For example, true peace is not found in life but in death. We think that we have peace but one just has an illusion created by man's mind rather than learned through experience like death. The mind may feel safe because of invulnerability, stability, and immunity form pain and sickness.

However, true peace can only be achievable after death. Even though man won't be able to be at peace until death, it is man only true peace. Jeffers saw love as an abnormality of an incestuous race, leading to many insanities. He claims that their is only one pure love and that is the love for God, who is indifferent to man. Religious followers warned about Jeffers radical religious visions while Marxists and other social critics reproached him for lack of empathy. Jeffers expressed his contempt for human society, which he regarded as doomed by its own violence and depravity.

He also, though rarely, wrote for the purpose of revealing God's plan for mankind's salvation. He believe that mankind needed salvation because of sin. What exactly is sin? "Sin is lawlessness" (1 John 3: 4). In other words, Jeffers believes that sins have led to human corruption. There is an answer to human corruption.

We have to discontinue in sin or be lost forever. God has made available a way to be forgiven. In his poetry, Jeffers has provided suggestions man can follow to be saved from sin. Religion is the key to any form of salvation for man. The basic requirements that one must meet in order to be saved include faith, repentance, and confession.

Without faith, we cannot please God. The kind of faith that God requires is an active and obedient faith. The Bible does teach that faith must work together with obedience in order for mankind. Repentance is necessary for salvation.

Repentance is a change of mind that leads to a change of action. Since sin separates us from God, then we must resolve to put sin behind us and refuse to continue in it. If we will do not repent, then we will die in our sins, lost and separated from God for an eternity in the punishing fires of hell (2 Thessalonians 1: 7-10). This does not have to be, if we will turn from our sins and follow Jesus Christ. Confession is also required for salvation. Jesus said that "whoever confesses Me before men, him I will also confess before My Father who is in heaven" (Matthew 10: 32).

Jeffers strongly that man's salvation is a free gift from God. Man can never make up for his sin by self-improvement or human effort. World War I was a disillusion for him, and World War II was a long anticipation building toward a disastrous fall. Yet he was human enough to care and to protest the stupidity of the war's fruitlessness.

He began to write antiwar poems as early as 1933 and was still writing them at the end of his life. His postwar book, The Double Axe, he began explaining how mankind as a whole is corrupt. His ideas remains largely unrecognized, yet as the Robert Brophy observed, 'Everything he wrote about the corruption of man, the death of democracy, the destruction of our planet and the foolish self centered vanity of humans has come true tenfold since his time". The book was accompanied by an unprecedented publisher's disclaimer.

Many felt that his thinking was to radical and a disclaimer was appropriate. By 1935, Jeffers reputation had reached its highest point, but the Great Depression and World War 2 contributed to his decline. Violent tragedy seemed acceptable only in times of comparative health and prosperity; not during war. Meanwhile, Jeffers continued writing short pieces expressing his denunciation of America's intervention. "The squid, frightened and angry, shoots darkness out of her ink sac; the fighting destroyer throws out a smoke screen, and fighting governments produce lies".

Jeffers kept pushing his views of man stating that our race began to think as an adult does, rather than an egocentric baby. He also believed that man controlled the keys of unearthly violence. Claiming that Earth is too small to feed us and we must have room. Also, Jeffers was once quoted saying, "We use to be individuals, not populations. Breeding like rabbits, we hasten to meet the day". (Birth and Death) In later poems, he began to wonder what was the best life for a man.

Jeffers came to the conclusion that man should have never been born and the next best was to die young. (The Silent Shepherd) As his reputation fell, Jeffers began less on man. With his uncompromising reverence for nonhuman values and his World War II isolationism, Jeffers fell out of favor with the public. Even though still outspoken after the war, newly created patriotism in America did nothing but anger many Americans.