It has been almost exactly 10 years since I first encountered Robinson Jeffers. Returning over and over to the riches contained in his Selected Poems, I find a different facet to focus on each time. Sometimes seeking ideas for my own verse—a rhythm to imitate, a novel way to frame a scene. Most often, the straightforward pleasure of luxuriating in great writing.

My most recent return has been focused on (finally) working my way through his longer narrative verse. For anyone who’d care to join me—“Roan Stallion” makes probably the best starting point for this venture (it can be read here in its entirety). It is one of the shortest of his dramas (coming out at 19 pages), a tight, cohesive piece of poetry. While, like its companion poem, Tamar, it set the tone for Jeffers’ explorations of transgressive sexuality and violence in his works, in this regard, it’s really more tame than most of his tales.  In short, Jeffers could be fairly accused of excesses in some of his narratives. But “Roan Stallion”—for a poem that scandalised some contemporary reviewers with its intimations of bestiality—actually avoids seeming gratuitous.

“Roan Stallion” is Jeffers’ take on the trope found in many mythic traditions, of congress between a god and a mortal woman—but cast in the context of his Inhumanist philosophy. The Biblical account of Mary’s divine conception is played against in the poem. But the tale of Leda and the Swan makes for an interesting comparison too. Yeats’ version of the legend (published just a couple of years before this) shares more than a superficial thematic similarity; its differences are also worth considering. I’ll return to this. But first, the plot: […]