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Spring 2013 Newsletter

Garden Party 2013

Please visit our home page for details on this year's Garden Party.

Save the Dates

FALL FESTIVAL October 4 and 5.  JEFFERS: ARCHITECT AND BUILDER

Carmel Mayor's Tour

by Lorna Claerbout (Docent)

I was delighted that Carmel-by-the-Sea Mayor Jason Burnett recently accepted my invitation for a tour of Tor House and Hawk Tower.  When he arrived, he was given a warm welcome by Foundation President Vince Huth and First Vice President Elliot Ruchowitz-Roberts.  Then I had the pleasure of taking him on a private tour.  He seemed to enjoy both reading and hearing the poetry of Robinson Jeffers.  He was amazed to learn that Jeffers completed his poems without editing from anyone else, which he said is quite different from his own writing experience as a mayor.  Mayor Burnett told me that he built a cabin in Big Sur with his own hands from fallen trees that he milled himself and was therefore especially interested in Jeffers' experiences with construction.  Since the Mayor has a young son of his own, I shared stories and photos of young Donnan and Garth.  He commented that the child chair in the living room built by Jeffers' great grandfather inspired him to think about building one for his own son.  After I shared some of my favorite Jeffers' lines about birds, including "A flight of pelicans is nothing lovelier to look at," he disclosed with a smile that his middle name is Kestrel. 

Poetry

Possession

by Deborah Fleming

Immigrants a century ago put up this house and barn,

carved bricks from local clay,

planed logs from nearby woods.

Since then whole families have grown

and gone.  Now insect-hungry bats

hang in highest rafters, cut

at dusk sharp angles in the sky

while swallows plaster nests of mud,

horse hair, and straw.

Among reeds at the pond's

edge, wild geese and mallards

pile cattail stems and feathers.

We too fly in,

build with what we find,

next for a season.

Deborah Fleming, a Yeats and Jeffers scholar, was a featured speakers at the 2006 Tor House Fall Festival.  This poem first appeared in Morning, Winter Solstice published in 2012 by The Vineyard Press, Port Jefferson, NY.

I
Caligula's screams never wake my dreams,
And bodies never screech from tongues when I slumber,
But such it seems are dreams of waking torture,
Where confines the strange self-inflicted wounds,
For which I plunder for a few lines of rhyming wonder?

But all I ever remember is mundane as dirt
Carved out my mind like the silver sinking twirl
Of calcium and Lyme, to perch upon a waking hurt,
Lest fish receive my quaking thunder.

Or perchance lightning is the grist of my grinding mind,
Melting sand as it strikes on the shore of time,
And plummets beneath the sea with quaking krill
Falling thus like shimmering ghosts, en mime:
"This night is not a thing made subtle by the mind,
Nor made subtler by the wind. Only rose petals list
Like angels on the breeze, to quit the quietude of this time."

II
Perch mates twixt ships, logs, and seashells
Larks the herald morning, that shines glitteringly
On a mirrored mantle above a dark-sooted hearth
Roaring like a winter sea, as oak gives heat to a sullen room,
Full of rugs and sharp-shined chairs,
Waiting for an about to begin…

III
But what waits? I see Brophy pointing to a bookshelf,
Never bothering to point out his own books, just pointing,
 Between Proserpine and Petulance,
With a stance towards scuttled sea-ships, and a list
Towards the ever present presence of Everson and Stevenson,
But Wait! There is a knocker at the door –Steinbeck dons his hat
And "To A God Unknown" raises its head, then bows
And walks away… before I could even mention it! 

But what of it, it’s nothing to do with us,
Standing on the bow of this ship of granite,
Stuck like a mast at the easterly edge of Carmel Bay,
And glistening in the dapple light that gleams between the mists
Of this October morning fog.

"Come in my old friend! Sit a while, certainly this old bench won't mind
The damp you shed upon us with your glistening fingers,
For I have never felt so welcome as I do
When the fog is thick as pea soup and drenching on cypress limbs
Like lovers thick as twigs."

IV
A mother from another land, dressed like a Vogue cover,
Bends down on one knee, to tie her daughter's shoe,
And the daughter is away, flittering among the rocks and sedges
Along the cliffs of Whaler's Cove,
Happy as a tiger swallowtail in a glen full of spring wildflowers,
And easy with the grace of a child,
With her whole life ahead of her.

V
I have lifted too much surety of doubt and shame
In this life of mine, and I have no doubt I am the poorer for it:
From this point on I shall dip my cup no further into these things
That only limit me… I know I may have limits
But what they are, are no concern of mine,
For even as a hawk never wonders if it is equal to the flight,
I too should know that all who listen to their heart
Are more than equal to the task!

The Last Word from Jeffers  

FOR UNA  

       1

I built her a tower when I was young—
Sometime she will die—
I built it with my hands, I hung
Stones in the sky.

Old but still strong I climb the stone—
Sometime she will die—
Climb the steep rough steps alone,
And weep in the sky.

Never weep, never weep.
       from  Be Angry at the Sun (1941)

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