Tamar and Other Poems
Tamar and Other Poems,collection by Jeffers, published in 1924. The volume contains “The Tower Beyond Tragedy,” “Night,” Shine, Perishing Republic, and The Coast Range Christ. The title piece is a free-verse narrative, suggested by a passage in II Samuel 13.
An incestuous strain in the Cauldwell family, farmers on the California coast, begins with the passion of David and his sister Helen. Helen dies, but a generation later David's son and daughter by his wife, Lee and Tamar, break the same moral law, and Tamar becomes pregnant. She has desired “a love sterile and sacred as the stars,” and now, terrified, attempts to conceal her sin by taking Will Andrews, a former suitor, as her lover. David's sister Stella becomes a psychic medium for the restless spirit of the dead Helen, impelling Tamar to further crime, for Tamar is jealous of Lee, who is about to leave for France to serve in the World War, and stirs her father to...
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