He continued to publish successful collections and his adaptation of Euripides’s tragedy Medea was adapted into a successful Broadway play. Jeffers’s popularity was at its peak in the 1920s and 30s. Jeffers also coined the word “inhumanism.” Frequently expressed in his poetry, inhumanism is the belief that mankind is too self-involved and doesn’t give enough attention to the “astonishing beauty of things.” He described inhumanism as “a shifting of emphasis and significance from man to ‘notman’ the rejection of human solipsism, and recognition of the trans-human magnificence… This manner of thought and feeling is neither misanthropic nor pessimist… It offers a reasonable detachment as rule of conduct, instead of love, hate and envy… it provides magnificence for the religious instinct, and satisfies our need to admire greatness and rejoice in beauty.” US #3438 – Jeffers’s poetry was largely inspired by California’s natural scenery. He also rejected the use of meter (an established rhythmic structure), instead opting for what he called “rolling stresses.” US #3649p – Ansel Adams was a friend of Jeffers and started the Tor House Foundation to preserve his home. Jeffers had always had an intense interest in nature and his poems reflected his preference for the natural world, often conveying human civilization as apocalyptic.
Yet he was also recognized for his talent at writing long narrative epics, earning comparisons to the ancient Greeks. His format and subject matter (such as murder) were controversial. He won fame with Tamar, a collection of his verse published in 1924. Jeffers drew inspiration from the great beauty of this.
Stone and building became common subjects of his poems. He would write in the morning and build in the afternoons. Jeffers learned stonemasonry from a local builder and continued to expand on the house throughout his life. He built their granite home, which they named Tor House (a tor is an outcropping of stone that rises above a hill summit or ridge crest). Jeffers returned to California and got married, settling in Carmel. He then spent a semester at the University of Washington in Seattle, where he studied forestry. Jeffers then went to the University of Southern California to study literature and medicine. Jeffers enjoyed spending time outside and was part of his school’s literary societies. He was a remarkable student and earned his bachelor’s degree from Occidental College when he was 18. Jeffers spent time in Europe when he was a child and attended schools in Germany, France, and Switzerland. He was a prolific, yet controversial poet who captured the natural beauty surrounding his home in Carmel, California. John Robinson Jeffers was born on January 10, 1887, in Allegheny, Pennsylvania. US #1485 – The second stamp in the American Arts Series pictures Jeffers and a man with a burro and a young boy and girl, representing the people of Carmel who Jeffers wrote about in rich detail in his poetry.
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