From Publishers Weekly
In the 1920s, on the strength of Roan Stallion, Tamar and Other Poems, Jeffers's critical reputation rivaled those of Frost and Eliotwhile the relatively frank sexual material to be found in his long, rough-hewn, often Callifornia-based narratives didn't hurt his popular reputation, as Washington State University professor Hunt notes in his introduction. After hitting the cover of Time in 1935, Jeffers (1887-1962) made a selection from his work three years later for Random House, one that has been listed as "out of stock indefinitely" for the last few years. A much more modest Random selected edition published a few years after Jeffers's death remains in print in paper, but this huge selection, culled from the monumental five-volume collected edition Hunt has edited for Stanford, is much more comprehensive, and can claim improved textual accuracy. Hunt's edition strips the punctuation added by contemporary printers (which "often obscures the rhythm and pacing of what Jeffers actually wrote, and at points even obscures meaning and nuance") and includes a carefully weighed choice of long and short works, as well as unpublished work. Jeffers's serious and sometimes morally indignant parables have most recently been taken up by Dana Gioia and others as a bulwark against Pound-and-Eliot-line modernism. This new selection will get readers closer than ever to the poems as Jeffers himself saw them, reacquainting them with "the night-wind veering, the smell of the spilt wine," and allowing readers to place him on their own. (Apr. 26) Forecast: While this selection is clearly intended to replace the Random edition, some readers may still prefer the poet's own selection (which could be provoked back into print), though this set will now have the edge on syllabi and in libraries. Further Jeffers projects from Stanford include Volume Five of The Collected Poetry, which will complete the project, slated for August, and Stones of the Sur, a book of lush Carmel coast photos by Morley Baer matched with appropriate Jeffers poems, which arrives from the press in June ($60 160p ISBN 0-8047-3942-0). Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
In this revised and expanded edition of his Sects, "Cults" and Alternative Religions (LJ 6/1/97), Barrett addresses issues such as why and how people join alternative religion or what went wrong at Waco and Jonestown and with Heaven's Gate or Aum Shinrikyo. Part 1 presents all new material, adding significant and interesting information to his earlier volume. Part 2, with 20 new entries, covers over 60 individual movements. A list of the movements' addresses is arranged alphabetically within each chapter, and an index makes it easy to find individual movements in the text. Because many of the movements include mention of their U.K. presence, the book at times seems British in focus, though most points are also related to the global scene. Barrett's precise and objective approach makes this a highly recommended title for all public libraries and for academic libraries seeking a comprehensive survey and exploration of humanity's beliefs and practices. Leroy Hommerding, Fort Myers Beach P.L., FL Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
The somber and violent long-lined narratives of Robinson Jeffers remained so popular for so long that his Selected Poetry (1938) was in print for more than 50 years. It lacked any of the quarter-century's worth of poems Jeffers wrote after its publication, and even before it went out of print, Jeffers' reputation was reviving, thanks to younger poets who acknowledged his influence, such as Mark Jarman, and older poets of great prominence, such as Czeslaw Milosz, who testified to his power. Hence this volume that selects from all his work is most welcome. Besides poems from Jeffers' four post-1938 collections, five prose pieces Jeffers wrote about his poetry and 13 unpublished poems add nearly 200 pages to the size of the 1938 volume. The only significant works Hunt doesn't cull from are The Women at Point Sur (1927), the longest and, Hunt says, "most ambitious, complex, and difficult" of Jeffers' narratives, and the Euripidean adaptation, Medea (1946). A volume for the core of American literature collections. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Los Angeles Times Book Review
"It is hard to see how anyone can read Jeffers’s best poetry and not perceive greatness."


San Francisco Chronicle
"Tim Hunt... has done a masterful job of sorting and choosing from a huge amount of material."


Book Description
This new selected edition of Jeffers's poetry is the first to include material from his entire career. When Jeffers shaped the 1938 Selected Poetry, he drew from his most productive period (1917-37), but his career was not over yet. In the quarter century that followed, four more volumes of his poetry were published. This new selected edition draws from these later volumes in addition to the earlier poetry, and it includes a sampling of the poems Jeffers left unpublished, along with several prose pieces in which he reflects on his poetry and poetics. This edition also adopts the texts of the recently completed The Collected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers (five volumes, Stanford, 1988-2000). When the poems were originally published, copy editors and typesetters adjusted Jeffers's punctuation, often obscuring the rhythm and pacing of what he actually wrote, and at points even obscuring meaning and nuance. This new selected edition, then, is a much broader, more accurate representation of Jeffers's career than the previous Selected Poetry.


About the Author
Tim Hunt is Professor of English at Washington State University. He is the author of Kerouac’s Crooked Road: The Development of a Fiction.


Excerpted from The Selected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers by Robinson Jeffers, Tim Hunt. Copyright © 2001. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved
To His Father (from Tamar) Christ was your lord and captain all your life, He fails the world but you he did not fail, He led you through all forms of grief and strife Intact, a man full-armed, he let prevail Nor outward malice nor the worse-fanged snake That coils in one's own brain against your calm, That great rich jewel well guarded for his sake With coronal age and death like quieting balm. I Father having followed other guides And oftener to my hurt no leader at all, Through years nailed up like dripping panther hides For trophies on a savage temple wall Hardly anticipate that reverend stage Of life, the snow-wreathed honor of extreme age. The Excesses of God (from Tamar) Is it not by his high superfluousness we know Our God? For to equal a need Is natural, animal, mineral: but to fling Rainbows over the rain And beauty above the moon, and secret rainbows On the domes of deep sea-shells, And make the necessary embrace of breeding Beautiful also as fire, Not even the weeds to multiply without blossom Nor the birds without music: There is the great humaneness at the heart of things, The extravagant kindness, the fountain Humanity can understand, and would flow likewise If power and desire were perch-mates. The Epic Stars (Last Poems, 1953-62) The heroic stars spending themselves, Coining their very flesh into bullets for the lost battle, They must burn out at length like used candles; And Mother Night will weep in her triumph, taking home her heros. There is the stuff for an epic poem- This magnificent raid at the heart of darkness, this lost battle- We don't know enough, we'll never know. Oh happy Homer, taking the stars and the Gods for granted.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

In the 1920s, on the strength of Roan Stallion, Tamar and Other Poems, Jeffers's critical reputation rivaled those of Frost and Eliotwhile the relatively frank sexual material to be found in his long, rough-hewn, often Callifornia-based narratives didn't hurt his popular reputation, as Washington State University professor Hunt notes in his introduction. After hitting the cover of Time in 1935, Jeffers (1887-1962) made a selection from his work three years later for Random House, one that has been listed as "out of stock indefinitely" for the last few years. A much more modest Random selected edition published a few years after Jeffers's death remains in print in paper, but this huge selection, culled from the monumental five-volume collected edition Hunt has edited for Stanford, is much more comprehensive, and can claim improved textual accuracy. Hunt's edition strips the punctuation added by contemporary printers (which "often obscures the rhythm and pacing of what Jeffers actually wrote, and at points even obscures meaning and nuance") and includes a carefully weighed choice of long and short works, as well as unpublished work. Jeffers's serious and sometimes morally indignant parables have most recently been taken up by Dana Gioia and others as a bulwark against Pound-and-Eliot-line modernism. This new selection will get readers closer than ever to the poems as Jeffers himself saw them, reacquainting them with "the night-wind veering, the smell of the spilt wine," and allowing readers to place him on their own. (Apr. 26) Forecast: While this selection is clearly intended to replace the Random edition, some readers may still prefer the poet's own selection (which could be provoked back into print), though this set will now have the edge on syllabi and in libraries. Further Jeffers projects from Stanford include Volume Five of The Collected Poetry, which will complete the project, slated for August, and Stones of the Sur, a book of lush Carmel coast photos by Morley Baer matched with appropriate Jeffers poems, which arrives from the press in June ($60 160p ISBN 0-8047-3942-0). Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

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