A Study Guide for Robinson Jeffers's "Shine, Perishing Republic"

By Gale and Cengage

A Study Guide for Robinson Jeffers's "Shine, Perishing Republic," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Poetry for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Poetry for Students for all of your research needs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cengage Learning - Gale
• Release date: Aug 19, 2016
• ISBN: 9781535833028

Book preview

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Shine, Perishing Republic

Robinson Jeffers

1925

Introduction

Shine, Perishing Republic, published in 1925 in the collection Roan Stallion, Tamar and Other Poems, is one of Robinson Jeffers’s most anthologized pieces. This book’s publication marked the beginning of his fame as a poet and the start of a career that would garner as much acclaim as it would harsh criticism. Written in a prosperous American period typically remembered as the Roaring Twenties, Shine, Perishing Republic reveals an extreme distaste for the underlying national trend toward corruption and dictatorship. Using long lines and an anthem-like tone reminiscent of Walt Whitman, Jeffers uses the poem to express a philosophy he would continue to explore throughout his career: Inhumanism. Jeffers sees the core of America hardening into the mould of its vulgarity, corrupt and self-centered, man’s relationship with fellow man like that of clever servant and "insufferable