This next poem is called "Failed Tribute
to the Stonemason of Tor House, Robinson Jeffers."
I've been reading a lot of Jeffers poetry in a Jeffers
biography.
And I was I think pretty involved in it
and him in his life and in his works.
And finally came time to I thought
go down and pay homage to through the house he had built.
It's in Carmel and when he and his wife
Una when they were first married in Bath
I don't know whatever it was 1908 or 1909,
they happened upon Carmel.
They had some friends there.
Carmel was a very small artistic colony in those days.
A few novelists and painters and very small.
And it was a terrifically rugged landscape.
And Jeffers who'd been a very fancy free character.
I mean, his father-- they'd lived
a million different places.
He'd been educated at many different schools in Europe.
And his father-- his father was probably crazy.
He was some kind of religious fanatic.
I don't remember what kind.
[LAUGHTER]
But they moved all the time.
He was crazy besides being a religious fanatic.
[LAUGHTER]
And they moved all the time.
They were always moving sending Jeffers
to a different school each year.
And anyway, Jeffers had never been very attached to anything.
But he was attached to this woman that he married.
And so he found this landscape and it just
changed him instantly.
And he wanted to see new-- he wanted to settle there.
So his wife sort of designed the house.
It was designed after some castle she'd seen in England.
And they hired a contractor.
And to make sure that they did the job right,
she encouraged Jeffers to get a job with the contractor
as an apprentice stonemason, which he did.
And he worked with them for however
long, that three or four years.
And then when they finished the basic part of the house
the contractor was released.
And Jeffers went on then for years
building it himself, building onto this house.
So there are a lot of other things
I suppose I could say but I don't
know if they're necessary.
Jeffers was sort of known for many things.
I love his poetry very much.
But during his lifetime and maybe even now
I think things are beginning to change.
But during his lifetime he was accused of a lot of things,
mainly being a misanthrope.
He realized at a very young age that he wanted to write.
He said that he wanted to write only about permanent things.
He didn't want to bother with our little leading fancies
and that he was interested in the permanent things
of this planet.
And so he was accused of being a misanthrope.
That was one of the things.
There were other problems.
That's enough.
I suppose about half of you probably
have been to Carmel so.
We travel down to see your house, Tor House, Hawk Tower
in Carmel, California.
It was not quite what I thought it would be.
I wanted it to be on a hill with a view
of the ocean unobstructed by other dwellings.
50 years ago, I know you had a clean walk to the sea hopping
from Boulder to Boulder, the various sea fowl rightly
impressed with your lean stern face.
But today with our cameras cocked
we had to sneak and crawl through trimmed lawns
to even verify the identity of your strange carbuncular
creation now rented to trillionaire non-literary folk
from Pasadena.
Edged in on all sides by Tri-level pasteboard phantasms,
it took a pair of good glasses to barely see
some newlyweds feed popcorn to an albatross.
Man is a puny thing, divorced whether he knows it or not.
And pays his monthly alimony, his child support.
Year after year you stroll down to this exceptionally violent
shore and chose your boulder.
The arms grew as the house grew as the mine grew
to exist outside of time, beyond the dalliance of your fellows.
Today, I hate Carmel.
I seek libation in the Tiki bar.
Naked native ladies are painted in iridescent orange
on Velvet cloth.
The whole town loves art.
[LAUGHTER]
And I donate this Singapore sling to the memory of it.
[LAUGHTER]
And join the stream of idlers simmering outside.
Much as hawks circled your head when you cut stone
all afternoon, kids with funny hats on motor scooters
keep circling the block.
Jeffers.