ered D.H. Lawrence in Mabel Dodge Luhan's circle at Taos; reports how well they got along vary. While living in Carmel, Jeffers became the focal point for a small but devoted group of admirers. At the peak of his fame, he was one of the few poets to be featured on the cover of Time magazine. He was asked to read at the Library of Congress, and was posthumously put on a U.S. postage stamp.
Jeffers' 1948 collection, The Double Axe and Other Poems (1948), included several poems critical of American involvement in the Second World War and his publisher, Random House, suppressed more and included a note that Jeffers' views were not those of the publishing company. The book was negatively reviewed by several critics, including poets Yvor Winters and Kenneth Rexroth. By 1977 Jeffers' reservations seemed prescient and Liveright published "'The Double-Axe & Other Poems including Eleven Suppressed Poems, with an important introduction by William Everson, Jeffers' major posthumous poet advocate and inheritor. Throughout the fifties and afterward Jeffers figured as an important voice for the worth and rights of the natural world as the environmental movement gathered strength. The photographer Ansel Adams was a close ally in this, and long friend, as was Edward Weston.
Jeffers coined the word "inhumanism": the belief that humankind is too self-centered and too indifferent to the "astonishing beauty of things." In the poem "Carmel Point" Jeffers called on humans to "uncenter" themselves. In "The Double Axe" Jeffers explicitly described "inhumanism" as "...a shifting of emphasis and significance from man to 'notman'; the rejection of human solipsism, and recognition of the trans-human magnificence...This manner of thought and feeling is neither misanthropic nor pessimist...It offers a reasonable detachment as rule of conduct, instead of love, hate and envy...it provides magnificence for the religious instinct, and satisfies our need to admire greatness and rejoice in beauty."In The Loyalties of Robinson Jeffers, the first in-depth study of Jeffers not written by one of his circle, poet and critic J. Radcliffe Squires addresses the question of a reconciliation of the beauty of the world and potential beauty in mankind: "Jeffers has asked us to look squarely at the universe. He has told us that materialism has its message, its relevance, and its solace. These are different from the message, relevance, and solace of humanism. Humanism teaches us best why we suffer, but materialism teaches us how to suffer."
His poems have been translated into many languages and published all over the world. Outside of the United States he is most popular in Japan and the Czech Republic. William Everson, Edward Abbey, Robert McDowell, Gary Snyder, and Mark Jarman are just a few recent authors who have been influenced by Jeffers. Charles Bukowski remarked that Jeffers was his favorite poet. Polish poet Czesław Miłosz also took an interest in Jeffers's poetry and worked as a translator for several volumes of his poems. Jeffers also exchanged some letters with his Czech translator and popularizer, the poet Kamil Bednář. Writer Paul Mooney (1904–1939), son of American Indian authority James Mooney (1861–1921) and collaborator of travel writer Richard Halliburton (1900–1939), "was known always to carry with him (a volume of Jeffers) as a chewer might carry a pouch of tobacco ... and, like Jeffers," writes Gerry Max in Horizon Chasers, "worshipped nature ... (taking) refuge (from the encroachments of civilization) in a sort of chthonian mysticism rife with Greek dramatic elements ..."Jeffers was an inspiration and friend to western U.S. photographers of the early 20th century, including Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, and Morley Baer. In fact, the elegant book of Baer's photographs juxtaposed with Jeffers's poetry, combines the creative talents of those two residents of the Big Sur coast.
Although Jeffers largely was marginalized in the mainstream academic community for decades, several important contemporary literary critics, including Albert Gelpi of Stanford Uni