“Hewing Against the Grain”: John Haines’s Critique of Robinson Jeffers

Authors

Abstract

That American poet John Haines was in some way influenced by Robinson Jeffers is difficult to dispute. Literary critics have especially noted the similarity between Haines’s and Jeffers’s biographies. And yet, while a number of distinct parallels join these poets, perhaps more interesting are the ways in which Haines’s poetics differ from Jeffers’s. In particular, Haines utilizes Jeffers’s concept of the “inhuman” for his own purpose—namely, that is, to investigate the protean border between human artifice and the natural world. Haines utilizes a unique, often elegiac, voice to do so, ultimately arriving at a decidedly generous tone.

Author Biography

Scott Riley is a graduate student at St. Mary's College, studying poetry and creative writing. He holds a BA in Rhetoric from the University of California, Berkeley, as well as a MA in Philosophical and Systematic Theology from the Graduate Theological Union.

Recommended Citation

(2014). “Hewing Against the Grain”: John Haines’s Critique of Robinson Jeffers. Landscapes: the Journal of the International Centre for Landscape and Language, 6(1).
Retrieved from https://ro.ecu.edu.au/landscapes/vol6/iss1/7