Blog Archive

Robinson Jeffers


Edward Weston, ‘Robinson Jeffers and Twin Sons, Garth & Donnan at Tor House, Carmel’, 1930-printed later than 1932, Photography, Gelatin Silver Print, Scott Nichols Gallery

Edward Weston. Robinson Jeffers and his sons, Garth and Donnan (1930)


Gray Weather

It is true that, older than man and ages to outlast him, the Pacific surf

Still cheerfully pounds the worn granite drum;
But there's no storm; and the birds are still, no song; no kind of excess;
Nothing that shines, nothing is dark;
There; is neither joy nor grief nor a person, the sun's tooth
sheathed in cloud,
And life has no more desires than a stone.
The stormy conditions of time and change are all abrogated, the essential
Violences of survival, pleasure,
Love, wrath and pain, and the curious desire of knowing, all perfectly 
suspended.
In the cloudy light, in the timeless quietness,
One explores deeper than the nerves or heart of nature, the womb or soul,
To the bone, the careless white bone, the excellence

John Ashbery

  The New Spirit (excerpt) I thought that if I could put it all down, that would be one way. And next the thought came to me that to leave a...