SOURCE: "Robinson Jeffers," in A Literary History of the American West, Texas Christian University Press, 1987, pp. 398-415.

In the essay below, Brophy places Jeffers's work in the context of the American West, concluding "the westering experience was for [Jeffers the exemplar of all journeys. Western motifs gave him vehicles for a larger philosophizing."]

Jeffers's themes are … consistent from the beginning of his mature period (Tamar, 1924) till the end of his life (The Beginning and the End, 1963). He was a pantheist who believed that God is the evolving universe, a self-torturing god who discovers himself in the violent change which is at the center of life's dynamic. One need not go far in Jeffers to find that all his images are cyclic: cycle is the truth of the stars, the life of the planet, the fate of man, insect, and flower. Cycle moves through birth, growth, fullness, decay, and...