Welcome readers to todays offering from The Philatelist. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. We have an interesting story to tell where in my opinion the honor of this stamp would not have been appreciated and should not have been offered.
This is a good looking stamp. The color usage on American stamps was getting better in the early 70s and the size of the stamp was rising. This allowed more to be fitted in. At a glance one will just see the profile of Mr. Jeffers but a group of people and even a Burro have been included. This is perhaps to make the stamp more about the community in Carmel, California that Mr. Jeffers was a part of.
The stamp today is issue A899, a 8 cent stamp issued by the United States on August 13th, 1973. The stamp depicts the American poet John Robinson Jeffers. It was part of a four stamp issue featuring figures from the arts. According to the Scott catalog, it is worth 25 whether it is mint or used.
Robinson Jeffers came from a well off background that included much travel and educational opportunities. He ended up in southern California where he was studying biology. Here is also began an long term affair with an older women named Una who was married to a prominent lawyer. The case became infamous and Una had to flee to Europe while the divorce case went through. The couple stayed together and Una became the wife of Mr. Jeffers.
The couple settled in Carmel by the sea, California were Mr. Jeffers had built a granite stone house named Tor house. As with much of Mr. Jefers’ life, breaking the rules had paid off. He later built a tower addition to the house called Hawks Tower. The home still stands and is a house museum.
Mr. Jefers began writing long form poetry on the nature of the area that kindly critics have related to Greek epics. In them nature is central and humans are evil. As might be expected, the prose did not include any meter as Mr. Jeffers felt that was an imposition of man on nature. After a while the works were well received by the east coast establishment. It must be remembered that during the 20s and the 30s the natural world of the west was unexperienced by most. So again a case where the rules are flouted and success follows.
Later work was less successful. Mr. Jeffers was opposed to American entry in World War II and later works became political screeds that were not well received. He died in 1962. He was recalled by some later as a progenitor of the environmental movement but he is not very prominent today.
I wonder why the postal service decided on Mr. Jeffers to be the poet in the arts issue. When one sets out to break rules, it seems strange that the establishment would then be dishing out rewards in response. It is safe to assume after all it is not what the artist was after.
You can probably guess that Mr. Jeffer’s poetry is not to my taste. I prefer the rules to be followed and proper meter takes more skill to write. Is it any wonder that so much of the great poetry came from long ago when rules were followed. Without it, it is just free form verse. All that said, I encourage you dear readers to read some of Mr. Jefers’ work. robinsonjeffersassociation.org has some samples.
Well my drink is empty and so it is time to open the conversation in the below comment section. With only one stamp in the issue for a poet, who would you have picked? Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.