Famous poems have been written on the deaths of those who have meant more than life itself to the poet. Yet there is one poem, hardly known at all I believe, which affects me most every time I read the lines. I know of no more desperate, despairing cry of love and loss in all the poetry I have read. It is a poem embedded in a longer poem. The long poem is called ‘Hungerfield.’ It is by Robinson Jeffers and the lines within the long poem are about the death of his beloved wife which he can hardly bear.
The poetry of Robinson Jeffers is unknown today. He was born in Pittsburgh more than 100 years ago, son of a professor of classics and theologian. He was educated in Zurich (medicine) and Washington (forestry), travelled widely for a while, but finally settled for good with his wife in Carmel, California, where he built himself a stone tower using rocks which he hauled from the beach with his own hands. There in absolute solitude he wrote his poems. Indeed, most of his poems are set in this lonely, rocky, seal-haunted North Californian coastal region with its
