SOURCE: A review of The Beginning and the End and Other Poems, in Chicago Tribune Magazine of Books, May 12, 1963, p. 3.

In the review below, Spender extols the "ruggedness" and "grandeur" of Jeffers's poetry but disagrees with the poet's "abdication" of human consciousness.

Robinson Jeffers lived in vast scenery opposite the vast Pacific on the coast of Monterey where he built with his own hands a tower in which he lived. His poetry is rugged as the hills of that landscape, with lines ragged as that ocean, and the spirit of the poet is most often likened in his poetry to a hawk. On the whole it provokes awe and enthusiasm, but it is not poetry to live with, because it lacks intimacy.

It is like a net with too wide a mesh which only catches the most cosmic experiences and the most ultimate feelings. Most of us, altho...