Robinson Jeffers

Big Sur, the 90 or so miles of rugged Pacific coast that unfurls south of Monterey, is known for pricey, reservations-only restaurants and as a capital of the New Age movement. It's a place, then, for well-fed people to get in touch with their inner selves in a spectacular natural setting. But before the arrival of $120 prix fixe dinners, before the human potential movement was founded at the Esalen Institute, Big Sur was associated with one of America's most austere and, for a while, famous artists.

Here's a cosmic truism: The end of the Earth is just another item on the universe's to-do list. The poet Robinson Jeffers understood this reality. That such a perspective need not be bleak is something he spent decades telling readers. Until his death on Jan. 20, 1962 -- 50 years ago -- Jeffers celebrated the "transhuman magnificence" of nature, the beautiful things both vast and near that can provide even a 21st century reader with solace, even if we are often a muddled, ugly species and even if all things, as they do, fade away.

National Endowment for the Arts Chairman Dana Gioia joined U.S. Rep. Sam Farr (D-Carmel) at the National Steinbeck Center in Salinas Tuesday to announce grants to three California organizations for The Big Read: The Poetry of Robinson Jeffers, a celebration of the Pennsylvania-born poet known for his passion for the rugged central California coast, and of Tor House, Jeffers' family home in Carmel. Through the Big Read poetry initiative, a joint effort of the NEA and the Poetry Foundation to celebrate historic poetry sites in the United States, the Robinson Jeffers Tor House Foundation will receive $15,000 to support a monthlong, bilingual celebration of Jeffers throughout Monterey County, expected to launch in October during Tor House's annual fall festival; the National Steinbeck Center will receive $17,000 to support an exhibition of Jeffers' poetry and photographs of the writer, and the University of California, Santa Cruz will receive $5,000 to host a symposium on the poet's work.

Big Sur poet: A Sept. 6 article on poet Robinson Jeffers and Big Sur incorrectly reported that writer Henry Miller moved to Big Sur because of Jeffers. Although Miller became a friend and admirer of the poet, he moved to Big Sur for his own reasons. Also, the Henry Miller Memorial Library was described incorrectly as a shrine to Jeffers; the library is dedicated to Miller, not Jeffers.

I Here are the fireworks. The men who conspired and labored To embroil this republic in the wreck of Europe have got their bargain-- And a bushel more. As for me, what can I do but fly the national flag from the top of the tower? America has neither race nor religion nor its own language: nation or nothing. Stare, little tower, Confidently across the Pacific, the flag on your head.

Thin-lipped, blue-eyed, without grace or hope, before God the Terrible, body of the world. Prayers are not heard. Basalt and granite. Above them, a bird of prey. The only beauty. What have I to do with you? . . . --"To Robinson Jeffers" by Czeslaw Milosz Czeslaw Milosz, the Lithuanian-born poet who won the 1980 Nobel Prize for Literature, has "ambiguous" feelings toward Robinson Jeffers, a Carmel poet who died in 1962 but whose ideas spark controversy even today.

Poet Robinson Jeffers, who wrote about the tragic fate of man and the savage grandeur of nature, is arguably the most famous alumnus of Occidental College. Not surprisingly, Occidental College has long proclaimed its pride in Jeffers, who was graduated in 1905 and whom some scholars call one of the top 10 American poets of the 20th Century. The school has amassed one of the country's top three collections of Jeffers' poetry, manuscripts, love letters and photographs. Jeffers scholar Robert J.

I Asked to name France's greatest poet, Baudelaire is said to have replied: "Victor Hugo, unfortunately." If this irony was apt to 19th-century France, it perhaps applies as well to 20th-century California, whose greatest poet, unfortunately, was Robinson Jeffers. Like Hugo, Jeffers has slipped into literary limbo. His reputation has fallen so far since his death in 1962 that when I recently asked about Jeffers in a Berkeley bookstore, the clerk had barely heard of him.

Robinson Jeffers was among the most ruggedly Promethean of 20th century poets, but every dawdling personal pleasure he denied himself in his flinty gaze at "boiling stars," soaring hawks and insufferable mankind seemed to find its way into Tor House and Hawk Tower, the Carmel family compound he finished in 1924 after five years of hauling granite boulders out of the sea -- first as a stonemason's apprentice, then alone with block and tackle.

Well done, Scott Timberg ["A Poetic Path," Sept. 6]. I've read a lot about the coast, having been born and reared here and living here still, and having written about it (and poet Robinson Jeffers) a good bit. The piece is very well observed and well expressed. Erin Gafill Big Sur

Well done, Scott Timberg ["A Poetic Path," Sept. 6]. I've read a lot about the coast, having been born and reared here and living here still, and having written about it (and poet Robinson Jeffers) a good bit. The piece is very well observed and well expressed. Erin Gafill Big Sur

Big Sur, the 90 or so miles of rugged Pacific coast that unfurls south of Monterey, is known for pricey, reservations-only restaurants and as a capital of the New Age movement. It's a place, then, for well-fed people to get in touch with their inner selves in a spectacular natural setting. But before the arrival of $120 prix fixe dinners, before the human potential movement was founded at the Esalen Institute, Big Sur was associated with one of America's most austere and, for a while, famous artists.

National Endowment for the Arts Chairman Dana Gioia joined U.S. Rep. Sam Farr (D-Carmel) at the National Steinbeck Center in Salinas Tuesday to announce grants to three California organizations for The Big Read: The Poetry of Robinson Jeffers, a celebration of the Pennsylvania-born poet known for his passion for the rugged central California coast, and of Tor House, Jeffers' family home in Carmel. Through the Big Read poetry initiative, a joint effort of the NEA and the Poetry Foundation to celebrate historic poetry sites in the United States, the Robinson Jeffers Tor House Foundation will receive $15,000 to support a monthlong, bilingual celebration of Jeffers throughout Monterey County, expected to launch in October during Tor House's annual fall festival; the National Steinbeck Center will receive $17,000 to support an exhibition of Jeffers' poetry and photographs of the writer, and the University of California, Santa Cruz will receive $5,000 to host a symposium on the poet's work.

Thank you for Barbara King's wonderful article ("A Place Where Nature Takes You by the Hand," Oct. 9) about a place, a poet and a dog who are all held very dear in my heart. I never had the pleasure of meeting Robinson Jeffers' bulldog, Haig, although I feel I know him from having read the poem in which he is the subject-narrator so many times. My husband first read it to me on the beach in Carmel many years ago. I was crying by the time he finished. My husband passed away five years ago and we read "The House Dog's Grave" at his memorial service.

Doris Day movie posters big and small hung in back of the bar at the Cypress Inn and above the small sofa where a woman sat languidly twisting her finger around the ear of one of her pugs while the other pug waddled and snorted over to a table to check out a new arrival -- some kind of hairy, massive-headed mountain rescuer who didn't look as if he belonged in a beach town.

Robinson Jeffers was among the most ruggedly Promethean of 20th century poets, but every dawdling personal pleasure he denied himself in his flinty gaze at "boiling stars," soaring hawks and insufferable mankind seemed to find its way into Tor House and Hawk Tower, the Carmel family compound he finished in 1924 after five years of hauling granite boulders out of the sea -- first as a stonemason's apprentice, then alone with block and tackle.

Big Sur poet: An article in the Sept. 6 Travel section on poet Robinson Jeffers and Big Sur incorrectly reported that writer Henry Miller moved to Big Sur because of Jeffers. Although Miller became a friend and admirer of the poet, he moved to Big Sur for his own reasons. Also, the Henry Miller Memorial Library was described incorrectly as a shrine to Jeffers; the library is dedicated to Miller, not Jeffers.

It wouldn't take much to bloody your hand on the rock that stands waist-high, like some giant primeval tooth, on the seaward side of Tor House, the stone cottage poet Robinson Jeffers began building in 1919 for himself and his family on a Carmel bluff.