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Jeffers is my God
“Jeffers, I suppose, is my god – the only man since Shakey to write the long narrative poem that does
not put one to sleep...Jeffers is...darker, more...modern and mad.”
Charles Bukowski - in a letter to Jory Sherman, April 1st, 1960
from Screams From the Balcony (Black Sparrow Press, 1993)
by Kevin L. Mills
○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○
Bukowski knew what he was talking about. It’s
a telling letter. The modern madness he saw in Jeffers’
poetry was something Bukowski could easily relate to.
That Bukowski refers to Jeffers as his ‘god’ -
as well as being a generous compliment- it is also
indicative of his sensitivity and self-awareness, that he
saw in Jeffers poetry a kindred spirit; of the two
bards walking the same paths. At this point in his
nascent career as a poet, Bukowski was still quite
obscure. But in his letters at this time he almost
always mentioned how much he admired Jeffers
work. During much of the 1960s, for example, he
peppered his letters to Ezra Pounds erstwhile muse,
Sheri Martinelli, with numerous references, and
exhortations, to read Jeffers. (Beerspit Night and
Cursing – the correspondence of Charles Bukowski and
Sheri Martinelli 1960 – 1967, Black Sparrow 2001).
Thirty years later, Bukowski demonstrated
his abiding respect for his one-time god in a poem
entitled simply Jeffers in Septuagenarian Stew – Stories
& Poems (Black Sparrow 1990). In this mature and
elegant poem, Bukowski tells us
‘his voice was dark
A rock-slab pronouncement
A voice not distracted by
the ordinary forces of
greed, cunning and need’
John Robinson Jeffers was born in Pittsburgh
in 1887, the son of a respected theologian, who
taught him Greek and Latin at a young age. He was
sent to a string of European boarding schools where
he studied French, German and Italian. In 1903 his
family moved to California, where Robinson enrolled
at the University of Southern California. It was here
he met a married woman, Una Custer, and he fell in
love. Una was three years older than Jeffers, and she
was married to a prominent LA attorney. But Jeffers
found in Una intellectual and emotional stimulation,
and it deepened their mutual attraction. Una divorced
her husband and Jeffers married her, which made The
Los Angeles Times, March 1 st 1913, under the
sensational headline, ‘Two Points of the Eternal
Triangle’. Big news indeed.
The newly-weds moved to the coastal town of
Carmel, and here Jeffers built –with his own handsthe
house they were to live in, Tor House, just fifty
yards from the crashing ocean. He was a man of the
elements.
Carmel had a rich heritage of artistic and
bohemian characters. Robert Louis Stevenson had
lived in the area; the beaches of Carmel gave him the
ideal setting of Treasure Island. In 1905 the poet
George Stirling was there, the protégé of Ambrose
Bierce. Stirling was at the centre of an artistic colony
that included, for various lengths of time, a number
of distinguished writers, including Jack London and
Upton Sinclair, and the tragic poet Nora May Finch,
who committed suicide after a soured love affair. But
it took a good few years for Jeffers work to really
ignite. His first published volume of poetry, Flagons
and Apples (1912) was self-financed, and failed to
attract much of a readership. And soon after it
arrived from the printer he lost almost complete
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