1925, reading from page 39 of Selected poems, Vintage Books, NY 1963
“Has begot giants; but being taken up
Like a maniac with self-love…”
This poem of a mere ten lines explores the human component of Jeffers overarching theme that man is nothing but a stain upon the cosmos that he becomes drunk with his own dreams, arrogant with his temporary interferences with nature and that ultimately his self-obsession will obviate the need for nature to turn on his meddlesome kid, for he will kill himself with his addiction to power-bestowing tools, their power much greater in terms of humanity than nature.
One gets the impression that Jeffers would scoff if alive today at the notion that man will destroy the earth, of the precepts of Man as God that define radical environmentalism.
Under the God of Things
James, with every plus there is a minus, reading about Jeffers
I find he preferred the natural world, can't blame him for his contempt for the modern world. biological war, read "Demon in the Freezer" nuclear annihilation, say Antarctica, drill down deep, and explode a bomb, or the Divine Bomb, "Planet of the apes" scatter a few of those around the planet, we can't destroy earth but we can wreck the environment, kill all higher life forms, heal or kill, build or destroy, prey or predator, that is reality. Science, a curse and a gift!