Inventing the Language to Tell It: Robinson Jeffers and the Biology of Consciousness

1 / Rock, Bark, and Blood: Sacramental Poetics and West Coast Nature Poetry

This chapter examines the development of Jeffers's sacramental poetics through the lens of ritual studies, arguing that rhetoric must be included in any discussion of myth-ritual patterns in his poetry. Through rhetoric, Jeffers is able to sacramentalize material nature, thereby allowing science and mysticism to coexist rather than conflict. The chapter also traces how Kenneth Rexroth and Gary Snyder extend and revise Jeffers's sacramental poetics by examining all three poets' use of geological themes in wilderness settings. Whereas Jeffers revitalized the pathetic fallacy through his use of rhetoric, Rexroth and Snyder suppressed the trope by filtering Jeffers's sacramental poetics through modernism.