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01-20-2012, 11:04 PM
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Honorary Poet Lariat
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Join Date: Nov 2001
Location: Colorado
Posts: 1,444
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Jeffers
I don't imagine Robinson Jeffers is to the taste of everyone here, but he means a great deal to me, partly because he was the first great poet of the West Coast, and partly because I love his "inhumanism," strange as the word sounds. Anyway, I stumbled on this article:
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/...,4371505.story
It's just a glimpse. If anyone else here would like to know more about Jeffers, let me recommend a small but vital organization, The Robinson Jeffers Association. Here's their website:
http://www.robinsonjeffersassociation.com/
And here is a poem I love:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/182240
I hope I have posted this in the right place.
Dave
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01-20-2012, 11:40 PM
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Location: Lazio, Italy
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My heart leaped when I saw "Jeffers"! He's a poet who's famous for his coldness in the humanistic sense but who always warms the cockles of me' heart. (I do have strange cockles, I realize.) Love that poem and completely disagree with Vendler's assessment at the end of that article. I also disagree when the article says Jeffers faded out after his death--lots of the sixties and seventies poets admired him. Bly is one. John Haines emulated him, different as he was in terms of literary style. Rexroth copped a few ideas from him as well.
I think this is a great one to put at Mastery. Jeffers is unsurpassed in his evocation of the natural world. Which is probably why Helen Vendler doesn't like him, actually.
How does he do it? Those long loose supple lines. The words you can taste in your mouth, the sensuality of his language. John Haines called it (in another context) "the stamp of the truth of things." He wrote what Rilke called "thing" poetry, and he did it very well.
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01-21-2012, 12:20 AM
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Join Date: Jul 2011
Location: Portland Maine
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It may be the most common sited of his poems but a wonderful poet and friend now gone loved it so much I can not think of one without thinking of the other.
Shine,Perishing Republic
Thanks for the links David.
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01-21-2012, 12:47 AM
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Join Date: Nov 2004
Location: Venice, Italy
Posts: 2,399
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Yes, thanks for this, Dave. Absolutely the right place.
I'm away from my books (and from easy access to a computer) for a couple of days but look forward to rejoining this thread soon.
Andrew mentions Bly, Haines and Rexroth. Coming closer to our own time, there's the wonderful tribute Mark Jarman paid him, in Iris.
Anyway, I'll be back...
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01-21-2012, 01:00 AM
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Join Date: May 2011
Location: Los Angeles
Posts: 3,263
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Andrew (Frisardi): you must have heard me thinking! This is exactly the way I feel about Jeffers too. I think I felt his "coldness" before his warmth seeped into my bones. A couple of years ago I had the privilege of participating in a Jeffers festival at Occidental College in Los Angeles (Jeffers' alma mater), as one of several poets asked to read Jeffers' work aloud. In fact, we were asked to read one of his poems, and then one of our own that somehow fit his sensibility. So I spent some time reading his work, trying to find a poem that felt right for me. And it took me a very long time--because I think on the page his poems often do seem almost hewn from rock, with a classical elegance not of our time. Nothing felt right. Finally, I picked one whose subject appealed to me, "Tor House," about the house Jeffers built near Carmel, stone by stone, and about the lasting-ness of rock and all of nature (so sad, really, given global warming, the loss of species, and the slow death of much of our planet). When I read it in front of an audience, however, the poem came alive for me. Yes, his are "the words you can taste in your mouth," as you said, Andrew. I had completely missed his "lyricism," the sheer gorgeousness of his language. Coupled with that "intent eye," Helen Vendler refers to, his work is chillingly precise but also passionately and warmly alive. At the same festival, I also heard the poet Cecilia Woloch read "Love the Wild Swan," which almost brought me to tears. (Thanks, David, for linking it above.) When poets despair of ever capturing anything in language, they should read this poem.
I should add that all of us poets taking part in the festival felt a kind of magic creep into our lives--there were several events over the course of a month. We were refreshed and uplifted by reading Jeffers' work. And we agreed that we'd never felt anything quite like it. For me it was akin to the exhilaration I felt as child one hot summer day spent swimming in a mountain pool part way up Snowdon, the highest mountain in Wales. Cool and hot.
Now here's the link for "Tor House:"
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/182242
Charlotte
Last edited by Charlotte Innes; 01-21-2012 at 01:13 AM.
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01-21-2012, 07:26 PM
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Join Date: Apr 2001
Location: Breaux Bridge, LA, USA
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I've always liked Jeffers and "Shine, Perishing Republic" is a particular favorite.
Dana Gioia thought Jeffers was under-recognized because he didn't live on the East Coast. I'm glad to see him getting the admiration he deserves on the sphere.
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01-21-2012, 10:02 PM
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Join Date: May 2009
Location: Inside the Beltway
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Gail White
Jeffers was under-recognized because he didn't live on the East Coast.
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Gail,
Maybe. But he makes up for that, because those of us growing up on the west coast considered him one of the gods.
We never counted Frost as a California poet, even though he was born in San Francisco (and frankly, it's hard to care much about birches or snowy woods when one's walking on the beach in San Diego), but Jeffers wrote our world.
The Purse Seine was my favorite. And Hurt Hawks: "I gave him the lead gift in the twilight." Geez...
Thanks,
Bill
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01-22-2012, 10:18 PM
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Join Date: Jun 2008
Location: Boston, MA
Posts: 200
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Quote:
Originally Posted by W.F. Lantry
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Those are two of my favorites, Bill. Another is "Vulture:"
"What a sublime end of one's body, what an enskyment; what a life after death."
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01-23-2012, 06:51 PM
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Join Date: Jul 2011
Location: Portland Maine
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Here is a snip of Jeffers from an intro he wrote for his Roan Stallion, Tamar, and Other Poems in 1935. I came across it in Jeffers: The Sivaistic Vision by Hotchkiss.
I thought some folks would like it.
... I am thinking of a bitter meditation that worked in my head one day while I returned from the woods. . . . But now, as I smelled the wild honey midway the trestle and meditated the direction of modern poetry, my discouragement blackened. . . . I laid down the bundle of sticks and stood sadly by our bridgehead. The air smelled of the sea and pine-resin and yerba buena, my girl and my dog were with me — and I was standing there like a poor God-forsaken man-of-letters, making my final decision not to become a "modern." I did not want to become slight and fantastic, abstract and unintelligible. I was doomed to go on imitating dead men, unless some possible wind should blow me emotions or ideas, or a point of view, or even mere rhythms, that had not occurred to them . . . . We climbed the fence and went home through the evening-lighted trees.
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