Self-Criticism in February - Poem by Robinson Jeffers

Jeffers' home in Carmel, Calif.

This is a re-post based on the season. The first time I posted it, it was because a Yevtushenko poem had brought it to mind. This time it's the turning of the calendar finally from what always seems to me to be the longest month, into the month of the title. I've always loved this title. And in the poem, I like that the speaker seems to win the argument with himself. I love the accusation "It is certain you have loved the beauty of storm disproportionately." The poem is from the 1930s, but surely like Jeffers' "present time," ours can seem as if it is "founded on violence" as well.

Self-Criticism in February

by Robinson Jeffers

The bay is not blue but sombre yellow

With wrack from the battered valley, it is speckled with violent foam heads

And tiger-striped with long lovely storm-shadows.

You love this better than the other mask; better eyes than yours

Would feel the equal beauty of the blue.

It is certain you have loved the beauty of storm disproportionately.

But the present time is not pastoral, but founded

On violence, pointed for more massive violence: perhaps it is not

Perversity but need that perceives the storm-beauty.

Well, bite on this: your poems are too full of ghosts and demons,

And people like phantoms -- how often life's are --

And passion so strained that the clay mouths go praying for destruction --

Alas, it is not unusual in life;

To every soul at some time. But why insist on it? And now

For the worst fault: you have never mistaken

Demon nor passion nor idealism for the real God.

Then what is most disliked in those verses

Remains most true. Unfortunately. If only you could sing

That God is love, or perhaps that social

Justice will prevail. I can tell lies in prose.