American poet and playwright was born in Pittsburgh, PA, in 1897, the son of a physician. His parents had him educated by private tutors, and sent him for his higher education to private schools in Switzerland and Germany, then to Occidental College in Los Angeles, CA, where he received his B.A. in 1905. He studied medicine for three years at the University of Southern California Medical School and spent a year studying forestry at the University of Washington, but nothing really satisfied him except writing poetry, and he didn't have enough money to enable him to support himself by writing poetry full-time. He married in 1913, and the next year was about to set out for England to see if he could make a living as a poet there when he was informed that an uncle had died and left him a substantial amount of money. Now with sufficient funds to support himself and his family, he began writing full-time. Many of his poems were inspired by the Big Sur country in northern California, and he eventually moved there (to Carmel) and built a house on a cliff overlooking the ocean.In 1929 had made an extended trip to Great Britain, a journey he repeated in 1937. A reclusive man, he liked to refer to his wife as a "buffer" between he and the outside world. He was athletic (and had been since college) and his height, lean physique (6'0") and chiseled features made many who didn't know him believe he was an Indian, and in fact many of his friends described him as "tomahawk-faced". Many of his poems were almost always about nature and the world around us and how "civilization" is destroying it--he has said that mankind is a dying race and that the world would be better off for it. Nevertheless, no less a figure than poet Carl Sandburg considered Jeffers to be one of America's great poets.He died in his beloved Carmel, CA, on Jan. 20, 1962.
