Tor House, Carmel, CA
—Built by Robinson Jeffers
—Poetry by Tom Goff, Carmichael, CA
—Photos of Tor House Courtesy of Public Domain
TO THE MASTER OF TOR HOUSE
The curious power which is Robinson Jeffers:
The mid-California mood in all he writes.
The Western, Sierra-to-shoreline granite peppers
With coarse dark mica flecks all star-strewn nights.
The escarpment’s a photo-negative of dark sky,
With all Greek culture and European air
Quite intermingled: breath of Strauss’s wry-
Minded mad music, Hofmannsthal’s verse, blows there
Hot blasts of Electra-gale, psychotic froth
Whips through The Tower Beyond Tragedy. The eyes
Of great King Oedipus pin-stuck fast as moths
Or butterflies pierced and affixed to cardboard—lies
Disdained—are the eyes of Cawdor, Truth at last
Sirened into his ears, man lashed to a mast.
Let it be said: Brave as him of ankles pierced
Whom Laius had pledged a sacrifice to the cliff-face:
He stuck out the coastal storms, foresaw a fierce
Death for our self-humbling, thorax-impaling race.
The curious power which is Robinson Jeffers:
The mid-California mood in all he writes.
The Western, Sierra-to-shoreline granite peppers
With coarse dark mica flecks all star-strewn nights.
The escarpment’s a photo-negative of dark sky,
With all Greek culture and European air
Quite intermingled: breath of Strauss’s wry-
Minded mad music, Hofmannsthal’s verse, blows there
Hot blasts of Electra-gale, psychotic froth
Whips through The Tower Beyond Tragedy. The eyes
Of great King Oedipus pin-stuck fast as moths
Or butterflies pierced and affixed to cardboard—lies
Disdained—are the eyes of Cawdor, Truth at last
Sirened into his ears, man lashed to a mast.
Let it be said: Brave as him of ankles pierced
Whom Laius had pledged a sacrifice to the cliff-face:
He stuck out the coastal storms, foresaw a fierce
Death for our self-humbling, thorax-impaling race.
CIVIL WAR, CALIFORNIA-STYLE
Fortunate Robinson Jeffers, fortunate us
Of California, who voted statehood and no slavery,
Not that we thought the enslaved ones South and East
Were our equals; but this Pacific-facing land lozenge
Was to be free white labor’s paradise. The Civil War’s
Musket speech left us barely scratched: a scant few Regulars
Gone shoulder to shoulder with volunteer regiments.
My wife Nora and I have visited Volcano,
The small sub-Sierra crossroads hamlet whose eruptions
Were largely the eructations and outrage-yells
Of drunk Gold Rush folk. The one hot skirmish,
A rabbled melee between gun-toting Reb followers
And Yankee favorers. The latter throng’s one brass cannon,
“Old Abe,” silenced all with one boom. Hurrahs and scoffs
Were shouted, one group gleeful, the other withdrawn sullen.
How Jeffers would have mocked a pitying mock,
Had he thought of it, Volcano’s great big Civil War
Of one micro-battle; he far distant, ensconced hard by
the muzzle,
The much rougher, the more pummeling ocean-gun,
The canister-spray of foam on resistant rock.
Fortunate Robinson Jeffers, fortunate us
Of California, who voted statehood and no slavery,
Not that we thought the enslaved ones South and East
Were our equals; but this Pacific-facing land lozenge
Was to be free white labor’s paradise. The Civil War’s
Musket speech left us barely scratched: a scant few Regulars
Gone shoulder to shoulder with volunteer regiments.
My wife Nora and I have visited Volcano,
The small sub-Sierra crossroads hamlet whose eruptions
Were largely the eructations and outrage-yells
Of drunk Gold Rush folk. The one hot skirmish,
A rabbled melee between gun-toting Reb followers
And Yankee favorers. The latter throng’s one brass cannon,
“Old Abe,” silenced all with one boom. Hurrahs and scoffs
Were shouted, one group gleeful, the other withdrawn sullen.
How Jeffers would have mocked a pitying mock,
Had he thought of it, Volcano’s great big Civil War
Of one micro-battle; he far distant, ensconced hard by
the muzzle,
The much rougher, the more pummeling ocean-gun,
The canister-spray of foam on resistant rock.
THE BOUNTY OF TOR HOUSE
Jeffers, I ask if you still live in stone,
Still inhabit or haunt the granite core
Of that house-complex you built, no telephone
At first, or circle the tower, rove the tor
For which your rough-surfaced domicile is named.
Try as they may, the bay which in storm rages,
The Carmel suburbs, can’t erode what’s framed
In rock that callused your hands, drove you to smoke
Too many cigarettes. As ash-wreath curls
Like Una’s ghost about your head, convoke
Us poets who dream, poets who drink your swirls
Of verse that out-tops your latest-raised “Australians,”
On guard to warn us unnatural human aliens.
In aging memory, the Pacific splinters
Against your patch of granite coastal headlands.
I marvel much how crusty Yvor Winters
Could think your accentual verse a mass of deadlands,
Not sparing Cawdor’s music from his strictures.
I marvel too how Helen Vendler jibs
At your wild lines, your stout full-fraught insistures,
At your Old Testament chidings leveled at fibs
We deem of small harm, and far more ghastly lies
We tell ourselves, while ecosystems listen:
They store up within green leaves, within redwood-wise
Rough trunks, anathemas; the “small rains” that glisten
Have it in them to blister our outwalls.
Dispensed is your bounty: news of our coming falls.
Jeffers, I ask if you still live in stone,
Still inhabit or haunt the granite core
Of that house-complex you built, no telephone
At first, or circle the tower, rove the tor
For which your rough-surfaced domicile is named.
Try as they may, the bay which in storm rages,
The Carmel suburbs, can’t erode what’s framed
In rock that callused your hands, drove you to smoke
Too many cigarettes. As ash-wreath curls
Like Una’s ghost about your head, convoke
Us poets who dream, poets who drink your swirls
Of verse that out-tops your latest-raised “Australians,”
On guard to warn us unnatural human aliens.
In aging memory, the Pacific splinters
Against your patch of granite coastal headlands.
I marvel much how crusty Yvor Winters
Could think your accentual verse a mass of deadlands,
Not sparing Cawdor’s music from his strictures.
I marvel too how Helen Vendler jibs
At your wild lines, your stout full-fraught insistures,
At your Old Testament chidings leveled at fibs
We deem of small harm, and far more ghastly lies
We tell ourselves, while ecosystems listen:
They store up within green leaves, within redwood-wise
Rough trunks, anathemas; the “small rains” that glisten
Have it in them to blister our outwalls.
Dispensed is your bounty: news of our coming falls.
Today’s LittleNip:
The tides are in our veins, we still mirror the stars, life is your child, but there is in me
Older and harder than life and more impartial, the eye that watched before there was an ocean.
―Robinson Jeffers
_____________________
Hearty congratulations to Snakepal Tom Goff, who placed First this year in the Robinson Jeffers Tor House Prize for Poetry. Poet Kim Stafford, the son of poet William Stafford, was the final judge in the competition, which includes an honorarium of $1,000.
Here is a link to the several winning poems and estimable poets, as well as Tom’s winning poem, with thanks to the Robinson Jeffers Tor House Foundation of Carmel: www.torhouse.org/prize/. For more about Tor House, go to www.torhouse.org/.
_____________________
—Medusa
The tides are in our veins, we still mirror the stars, life is your child, but there is in me
Older and harder than life and more impartial, the eye that watched before there was an ocean.
―Robinson Jeffers
_____________________
Hearty congratulations to Snakepal Tom Goff, who placed First this year in the Robinson Jeffers Tor House Prize for Poetry. Poet Kim Stafford, the son of poet William Stafford, was the final judge in the competition, which includes an honorarium of $1,000.
Here is a link to the several winning poems and estimable poets, as well as Tom’s winning poem, with thanks to the Robinson Jeffers Tor House Foundation of Carmel: www.torhouse.org/prize/. For more about Tor House, go to www.torhouse.org/.
_____________________
—Medusa
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Would you like to be a SnakePal?
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that which was previously-published.
Just remember:
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for poetry, of course!
clicking on them once, then clicking on the x
in the top right corner to come back to Medusa.
Would you like to be a SnakePal?
All you have to do is send poetry and/or
photos and artwork to
kathykieth@hotmail.com. We post
work from all over the world, including
that which was previously-published.
Just remember:
the snakes of Medusa are always hungry—
for poetry, of course!
