SUCH COUNSELS YOU GAVE TO ME

by Robinson Jeffers ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A

Jeffers is to poetry what O'Neill is to drama and Faulkner to fiction. But in his field he is an essential item, and his followers will demand his new book, though this does not rank with his earlier work. Once again tormented, violent, elemental poetry, which nevertheless has a certain power and spaciousness, along with its nihilism. The title poem presents the Oedipus theme, in the story of a youth who comes home from college because he cannot continue to manage it alone. The father opposes him -- he and his mother plot his death. The son after a love scene, turns on his mother and plans suicide, but withholds in order to confess his guilt in public. The balance of the poems are shorter, many on topical themes, fascism, war, the proletariat. The narative sections lack poetic power; there is the old fire and sweep in the descriptive passages and the philosophy. But the thought is old and overdone.

Pub Date: N/A

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Random House

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1937

Categories: NONFICTION