Robinson Jeffers

Tor House is the historical home of Robinson Jeffers, one of my favorite poets, so my trek from the Arch here in St. Louis to Tor House in Carmel, California, is also a pilgrimage. Also in Carmel, along the Pacific shore, down from Tor House, is Hawk Tower, which Jeffers built for his wife. Jeffers is known as a poet of inhumanism. That is, Jeffers thinks people have fucked up the world and that our time in nature is short lived. Most of his poems reflect that sense of inhumanism. Yet Jeffers also could write remarkably sensitive poems, such as this one, which he wrote about Hawk Tower and his wife:

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. (CP 3:33)