A talk by Tor House Foundation President Elliot Ruchowitz-Roberts at the Carmel Public Library. Thursday June 12th 4-5 PM. Call 831-624-4629 for more information.

Celebrate Spring, Poetry, and Tor House History with Live Music, Refreshments, and Docent Guidance at the Annual Garden Party. May 4th, 2-5 PM. Click on the Reservations button to purchase tickets online or at the gate on the day of the party. General Admission is $25, Students $10. Proceeds support the mission of The Tor House Foundation.

Award-winning poet and Robinson Jeffers scholar Tim Hunt will give a poetry reading on Friday, October 18, at 7 p.m. at Tor House (26304 Ocean View Ave., Carmel, 93923).  Admission is $15.  Seating is limited, so advanced reservations are required. Click on the Reservations button to purchase online. A reception will follow the reading.  For more information:  (831) 624-1813.

Hunt has published six collections of poetry, most recently, Western Where (Broadstone Books, 2024).  His collectionLiner Notes was the winner of the 2018 Main Street Rag Poetry Book Award; his collection Fault Lines was a finalist for five book awards; and his poem "Lake County Elegy" received the Chester H. Jones National Poetry Prize.  He has also published four chapbooks of poetry, including Thirteen Ways of Talking to a Blackbird (2013) and Redneck Yoga (2010), both published by Finishing Line Press.

A fourth-generation Californian, Hunt had a distinguished teaching career at both Washington State University and Illinois State University.  A noted Robinson Jeffers scholar who currently serves as editor of the scholarly journal Jeffers Studies, he is the editor of the five volume The Collected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers, co-editor of Jeffers's The Point Alma Venus Manuscripts ..., and author of numerous articles on Jeffers.  He is also author of two studies of the work of Jack Kerouac. 

Stroll the gardens, photograph to your heart's content, learn about Robinson Jeffers and Tor House from our knowledgeable docents, watch yarn being spun on a spinning wheel brought to this country from Ireland in 1847, enjoy music--including a bagpiper from the top of Hawk Tower--birdwatching, plein air artists, and tasty treats from Sweet Elena's Bakery: all these at our annual Garden Party, Sunday, May 5, from 2-5 PM

Featuring Mary Kerr and Andrew Schelling.

Tor House Presents: Poet and non-fiction author Patrice Vecchione
Click Here for Reservations

Tor House Presents: Ethan Koss-Smith, Tor House Fellow Saturday, September 23, 2023, 6:30-8 PM,
Click here for reservations.

This year’s Garden Party will celebrate spring and the arts.   Guests will be greeted by bagpiper Ed Jarvis playing tunes from the top of Hawk Tower and, during the course of the afternoon, will be able to enjoy listening to Una Jeffers’ fully restored 1904 Steinway Model O Grand Piano played by Melinda Coffey Armstead and Barbara Rudzicka, and to the Celtic trio John Weed & Sons (Tyler and Evan). Artists from Monterey Bay Plein Air Painters Association will have plein air paintings of Tor House and Hawk Tower for sale, a percent of the sales going to Tor House.  Santa Cruz weaver Kris Nardello will give a demonstration of spinning using the spinning wheel brought from County Down, Northern Ireland, by Una Jeffers’ grandmother, Elizabeth Donnan Lindsay, in 1841.

Master printers Peter and Donna Thomas and artist Tom Killion will be present to celebrate their limited-edition broadside--hand-printed on hand-made paper--featuring Jeffers’ poem “the polar ice-caps” and Killion’s single block relief print of Hawk Tower (shown in the poster below). There will be a limited number of broadsides available for sale with all proceeds going to Tor House. See the example of the broadside below the poster image.

Also available are copies of The Fire of Heaven: Enrique Martínez Celaya and Robinson Jeffers, the catalogue for Martínez Celaya’s Monterey Museum of Art exhibit held last year.

There will be food and drink, with Sweet Elena’s Bakery providing tasty treats.

Parking is limited, so please consider carpooling. Please do not block our neighbors’ driveways. Weather changes quickly on the coast, so bring layers. Masks are required when touring inside Tor House.

Please join us for

A Reading at Tor House

with

John Dotson & Neale Inglenook
Friday, September 30 at 7:00 p.m.

Admission:  $10

Join us to hear John Dotson, former Poet-in-Residence at Tor House, and Neale Inglenook, a recent Fellow of Tor House Foundation, discuss their experiences at Tor House, read their favorite Jeffers poems, and read from their own writing. Reception to follow.

John Dotson served as the first and only Poet-in-Residence at Tor House. In 1987, a report of that experience was published as The Enduring Voice: A Tor House Journal. Through the years, John has brought forth books of poetry and prose, plays, visual art in multiple modes, sculpture, and performances in various media. For twenty years he hosted the program "Ars Poetica?" on KAZU, Monterey Bay Public Radio. John has taught widely, at Santa Catalina School, at UC Santa Cruz–Ext and UC Irvine–Ext, and elsewhere. Since 2008, when Tor House Foundation co-sponsored the visit of Welsh poet Peter Thabit Jones and Aeronwy Thomas, daughter of Dylan Thomas, John has been entangled with the life and work of Dylan Thomas. John’s book Love For Ever Meridian: Finding Dylan Thomas in the 21st Century was published in 2012. Singing in My Chains: Hearing Dylan Thomas at the Birth of an Age is forthcoming. John serves as president of the Monterey Friends of C.G. Jung.

Neale Inglenook is a writer, husband, father, gardener, practitioner of wilderness skills and an editor for the Dark Mountain Project. The Manifesto of the Dark Mountain Project begins with Robinson Jeffers’s poem “Rearmament” and takes its name from the last two words of the poem. Neale has engaged with Robinson Jeffers’ work in writing for two decades. He was a Fellow of Tor House Foundation this past spring. His account of his time at Tor House, “Last Days at Tor House,” appears in the most recent Dark Mountain Journal. Grown from the California soil, he has recently relocated with his family to the woods of Maine. There, he and his wife are currently insulating a log cabin and installing a wood burning stove in preparation for settling there with their two young daughters. The cabin has no indoor plumbing and no electricity.

 Reservations are required and can be made by clicking or tapping Buy Tickets Now.

Proof of vaccination and masks indoors are required. 

Tor House is at 26304 Ocean View Avenue, Carmel

Our Foundation President, Elliot Ruchowitz-Roberts, will be part of “An Evening of Poetry” at the Monterey Museum of Art this coming Saturday, July 16, 5:30-7:00 p.m. 

It is an impressive group of readers, and Elliot feels honored to have been asked to read with them.  The MMA website lists the featured poets as follows:

• Juan Felipe Herrera, U.S. Poet Laureate emeritus
• Daniel B. Summerhill, Monterey County Poet Laureate
• Anthony Cody, 2022 Whiting Winner in Poetry
• Elliot Ruchowitz-Roberts, Robinson Jeffers Tor House Foundation President.

 Here is the link to the MMA website advertising the event.

https://montereyart.org/event/an-evening-of-poetry/

$20 Tickets can be purchased at the Gate only. Music, Poetry, Refreshments, Beauty All Around.

Stay safe when visiting Tor House. Proof of Full Vaccination Required. Please mask up when indoors at Tor House. Most activities are outside. Dress in layers due to our fabulous changeable weather on the Pacific Coast.

Online Webinar:
Two Newly Published Robinson Jeffers Titles

Whatever else the new year will bring us, it has brought us two new significant Robinson Jeffers titles: 

Deborah Sharp’s edition of Robinson Jeffers Family Travel Diaries: Volume One: British Isles, 1929 (designed and typeset by Norris Pope and published by Tor House Press): 

In June 1929, the poet Robinson Jeffers—with his wife Una and their twelve-year-old twin sons Donnan and Garth—sailed to Ireland, the first stop on a seven-month journey through the British Isles. As they traveled, the whole family contributed to a detailed diary, recording their individual responses to the places and people they encountered. The diary includes vivid observations as well as references to Una’s and Robinson’s extensive knowledge of the history, literature, art, music, folklore, and architecture of the places they explored. Readers of Jeffers will find much that adds to their understanding of the poet and his work. 

Rob Kafka's transcriptions of Robinson Jeffers' The Point Alma Venus Manuscripts: Preliminary Versions of The Women at Point Sur (Stanford University Press): 

The Point Alma Venus manuscripts document Jeffers's four unfinished but substantial preliminary attempts at what became The Women at Point Sur, which he believed was his "most inclusive, and poetically the most intense" narrative poem.  In addition to shedding important light on the composition and themes of The Women at Point Sur, they predate other key work from this crucial period and provide new contexts for reading The Tower Beyond Tragedy and Roan Stallion. 

Our next RJA-THF Webinar, to be held Thursday January 27, 2022, beginning at 6:30 p.m. (Pacific), will introduce these editions and consider their implications for our understanding of Jeffers and his work. 

Aaron Yoshinobu, the new President of the Robinson Jeffers Association, will be our host.  Deborah Sharp, retired Tor House Foundation Trustee, Tor House tour docent, and English instructor, be our guide for the Travel Diaries, and Tim Hunt, editor of The Collected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers, will be our guide for Point Alma Venus. 

Please mark your calendars and click this link to register and secure your spot: 

https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_dNkxo5ctTdWWPVUYxCTFVA 

The Point Alma Venus Manuscripts will be published January 18 and available through the usual on-line retailers and local book shops.  Through January 31, Stanford University Press is offering a 30% discount (use the code “HELLO2022”) for all titles on its site through January 31.  The Press has also provided a discount code specifically for Alma Venus (“JEFFERS20”) for the RJA and THF communities for those ordering after January 31 the 30% discount code expires.  To order directly from Stanford University Press, please use this URL: https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=18102. 

Robinson Jeffers Family Travel Diaries: Volume One will be published January 24 with the hardcover and paperback editions available on that date or soon after through Amazon.  They will also be offered with introductory sale prices to members of the Robison Jeffers Tor House Foundation and Robinson Jeffers Association directly from Tor House. Instructions for purchasing from Tor House will soon be added to the Tor House Foundation website.

Ezra Pound once observed that poetry is “news that stays news,” and a mark of great poetry is its capacity to generate new and renewed explorations. Our fifth RJA-THF webinar will focus on three recent studies that can renew and extend our explorations of Robinson Jeffers’ poetry. Please set aside an hour to join us as Dr. Katharine Bubel, Dr. Brett Colasacco, and Dr. Geneva Gano introduce us to their recent research and share their insights into the nature and significance of Jeffers’ poetry.

“New Voices and New Directions in Jeffers Scholarship” is scheduled for Thursday, August 26, 2021, beginning at 6:30 p.m. (Pacific). Please click the link below to register.
https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN__u2uhvLAQB6wMspw9Zn9sw

Speakers

Katharine Bubel’s recent PhD dissertation, “Edge Effects: Poetry, Place and Spiritual Practices” (University of Victoria), focuses on Robinson Jeffers, Theodore Roethke, Denise Levertov, Robert Hass, and Jan Zwicky, and the aesthetics of relinquishment and affirmation in these west coast poets. She is an assistant professor of English at Trinity Western University in British Columbia, where her research and teaching interests include American literature, twentieth- and twenty-first-century poetry, and writings at the intersections of the religious and environmental imaginations.

Brett Colasacco is a graduate of the University of Chicago’s interdisciplinary program in religion, literature, and visual culture. His recent PhD dissertation, “Robinson Jeffers: Poet at the End of the World,” explores Jeffers through a revisionary account of modern theories of myth and their political dimensions. He serves as the executive director of the Robinson Jeffers Association and works as a writer, editor, and manager in the higher education industry, specializing in development and executive communications.

Geneva Gano, a past president of the Robinson Jeffers Association, is Jesse H. and Mary Gibbs Jones Professor of Southwestern Studies at Texas State University. Her recent book, The Little Art Colony and US Modernism: Carmel, Provincetown, Taos (Edinburgh University Press, 2020), considers the complex interplay of social, cultural, and economic factors in the emergence of Carmel as a little art colony, providing a new context for considering Jeffers’ importance to Carmel and Carmel’s importance to Jeffers and his poetry.

The Robinson Jeffers Association and the Tor House Foundation invite you to the fourth webinar in our digital series. Join us for a three-stop tour on the Monterey Peninsula as we review a selection of historical and contemporary portraits of Robinson and Una Jeffers. First, Kim Weston will trace the Jeffers’ footsteps at his grandfather Edward’s home in Carmel Highlands; an excerpt of this filmed tour will be shown during the webinar, and a link to the full video will also be made available to those who register. Next we stop in at The Weston Gallery, Carmel’s acclaimed photography gallery, where owner Matt Weston and Tor House board member Amy Essick will review a selection of portraits of Una and Robinson made by photographers Edward Weston and Johan Hagemeyer in the late 1920s. Our last tour stop will feature images of the recent bronzes made in tribute to Robinson Jeffers and installed at the Monterey Conference Center. Artists Carol Matranga Courtney and Will Pettee will share details of the project, from their inspiration in Edward Weston’s 1929 portraits of Jeffers to the process of sculpting clay originals in bas-relief and the final translation to patinated bronze.

“Looking at Jeffers: Portraits - Weston, Hagemeyer, and contemporary bronzes” is scheduled for Friday, April 30, beginning at 6:30 p.m. (Pacific). Please click the link below to register.

https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_GbH-hmC7QTCXeMd_Lpt_FQ

Host

Amy Essick is a Carmel, California, fine art appraiser, curator, and consultant for art collections and public art projects. Her life in the arts includes a BFA in studio arts, art gallery directorships, and the caring curation of a large public art collection. Volunteering with Monterey Peninsula arts organizations has been a constant in her life.

Special guest speakers

Matt Weston is co-owner of The Weston Gallery, Inc., located in Carmel, California. For over thirty years Matt has been an art dealer, curator, and appraiser. He has been instrumental in the placement of photographic art in hundreds of private, public, corporate, and institutional collections and exhibitions throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia.

Carol Matranga Courtney is a classically trained sculptor based in Pacific Grove, California. Her figurative pieces range from commissioned portraits to explorations of form, character, and spirit. Her still-life sculptures of birds in nature evoke the beauty of the marshes and beaches of the Central Coast.

Will Pettee is a Monterey, California, classical figurative and portrait sculptor who works in bronze to create both one-of-a-kind and limited-edition works. He has been sculpting by private commission for over thirty years and is an associate member of the National Sculpture Society. His sculptures can be seen in public and private collections throughout the United States as well as Europe and Japan.

The third webinar exploring the work of Robinson Jeffers presented by the Robinson Jeffers Association and Tor House Foundation will be a panel discussion focused on “Shine, Perishing Republic,” “Shine, Republic,” and “Shine, Empire.” These three poems composed over a period of nearly twenty years from the early 1920s to 1940 remind us that Jeffers was not only a poet focused on the natural world but that he was also acutely responsive to politics and history.

Tim Hunt will, again, moderate, and our panelists will be:

• Shelley Alden Brooks, who teaches environmental history with a particular focus on California at UC Davis and who came to recognize Jeffers’ significance while working on Big Sur: The Making of a Prized California Landscape (UC Press, 2017).

• Whitney Hoth is particularly interested in Jeffers’ contributions to the literature of the Great War and its aftermath. He discovered Jeffers through a chance encounter with Cawdor and then studied Jeffers with Radcliffe Squires and Stephen Tonsor at the University of Michigan. He is Associate Editor of Jeffers Studies.

• Robert Zaller: author of three books on Jeffers, The Cliffs of Solitude, Robinson Jeffers and the American Sublime, and The Atom To Be Split, recipient of the 2018 Lawrence Clark Powell Award for distinguished Jeffers scholarship, and a former RJA president.

The panel discussion will be January 28, 6:30-7:30 p.m. (PDT).

For a PDF handout of the three poems, please click here.

If you would like to attend the panel discussion, it will be available both via Zoom and Facebook. Information on how to access the program using these channels is included below. If you’re a Facebook user, please consider using the link below to “like” the re-launched Robinson Jeffers Association Facebook page. And if you have friends and colleagues who are not members of RJA or THF who might be interested in the program, please feel free to forward this message along.

To attend the webinar via Zoom, please register via the following link:
https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_Q4WWJXi_ToW7tgBZ5Q3YRw

To attend the webinar via Facebook, please visit the RJA’s new page at
https://www.facebook.com/Robinson-Jeffers-Association-103498468113203
(the livestream will appear on the page’s timeline at 6:30 p.m. [PDT] on Wednesday, January 28).

Setting Robinson Jeffers to Music is now available for viewing online at:

https://robinsonjeffersassociation.org/2020/10/rja-thf-webinars-the-purse-seine-setting-jeffers-to-music/

The second RJA-THF webinar will take place  Sunday, October 25 at 1:00 PM Pacific Time.  The free program will feature two contemporary composers, Christopher Anderson-Bazzoli and Jessica Hunt, whose work engages Jeffers' poetry.  Anderson-Bazzoli will present his setting of "Distant Rainfall" from his song cycle,  Continent's End (recently recorded and released on  Delos Music), and Hunt will present Helen Thurso's featured aria from her opera-in-progress based on  Thurso's Landing. The program will begin with recordings of the two selections, followed by a brief discussion between the two composers with the rest of the hour devoted to their responses to questions from those attending.  Concert pianist and Tor House docent Melinda Coffey Armstead will host and facilitate.  (Click here for the texts of "Distant Rainfall" and for Helen's aria.) 

As with July's program focused on "The Purse-Seine," this webinar will utilize Zoom.  To secure a virtual seat for the session, please click this link to register: 
https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_TGd9GTULTFS98IDikRSung

And please feel free to forward this invitation and link along to family, friends, and colleagues who might be interested.  (The session will be recorded for those interested in the program but unable to attend on the 25th.) 

We hope you'll be able to join us.

In this time of Covid, the Robinson Jeffers Association and Tor House Foundation have decided to experiment with on-line programming for our members and for the broader community of those who value the work of Robinson Jeffers. These programs will, we expect, be quarterly, engage a range of topics, include a variety of presenters from the two organizations, and use a variety of on-line formats. 

 The first program, a panel discussion, will focus on "The Purse-Seine," a poem from the mid-1930s that offers a context for reflection for our current cultural, social, and ecological situation. The panelists will be Jim Karman, President of the Robinson Jeffers Association; Elliot Ruchowitz-Roberts, President of the Tor House Foundation, and Susan Shillinglaw, the former Director of the National Steinbeck Center. Tim Hunt will moderate.

 The panel discussion will be July 29, 6:30-7:30 p.m. (PDT).

 For the text of "The Purse-Seine," download the PDF "handout."

 We hope you'll join us in this new venture. If you would like to attend the panel discussion, it will be available both via Zoom and Facebook. Information on how to access the program using these channels is included below. And if you're a Facebook user, please consider using the link below to like the re-launched Robinson Jeffers Association Facebook page. And if you have friends and colleagues who are not members of RJA or THF who might be interested in the program, please feel free to forward this message along.

 To attend the webinar via Zoom, please register via the following link: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_yqQmmbIRToCVOUayUTHgRQ

 To attend the webinar via Facebook, please visit the RJA's new page at https://www.facebook.com/Robinson-Jeffers-Association-103498468113203

(the livestream will appear on the page's timeline at 6:30pm PST on Wednesday July 29).

For details on joining Zoom or Facebook webinars, click here for PDF.

“Poetry, Nature and Love” on Friday March 20 at 3:00 for one performance only. Tor House will ring with Robert Schumann’s Dichterliebe and Liederkreis. This intimate hommage to Una Jeffers will feature soprano Karen Neal (photo below) from Miami and Tor House musical docent & pianist Melinda Coffey Armstead. The songs will be sung in the original German poetic texts of Heine and Eichendorff. Admission $20, seating limited to 12 only. Duration one hour. For tickets, Click on the BOOK NOW button below. Note that there are other regular Musical Tours listed. Select March 20 for this special event.