Robinson Jeffers was the great poet of California’s golden age, celebrated with T.S. Eliot as our greatest poet and with Eugene O’Neill as our greatest tragedian. His haunting lyrics and tragic dramas immortalized the wild Big Sur south of Carmel-by-the-Sea, his home for half a century. More than any one figure, he speaks for the collision between the American Wisdom Tradition and exploding modernity. His poetry asks the great questions of modern ethics and environmentalism: What are we in relation to nature? What is the best life for humankind?