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