Readers of Robinson Jeffers are accustomed to finding words of wisdom in his letters and poetry that address issues of timely concern—even issues as far from Jeffers himself as the outbreak of Covid-19. The word “pestilence,” for instance, appears in Passenger Pigeons, a poem about mass extinction and humanity’s false belief in its own invulnerability. The word “plague” shows up in There is this infinite energy, a poem that urges us to see beauty in everything. And the word “virus” is featured in The unformed volcanic earth, a poem that describes the first major stage of life as a virus floating on the surface of a primal ocean. These, and any number of other poems (we all have our favorites), are worth rereading as we ponder the Hydra-like crisis we’re facing.

Before the pandemic arrived, an RJA ad hoc committee was working out the details of a partnership with the Tor House Foundation, whereby RJA scholars would provide most of the program material for the 2020 THF Fall Festival. If the partnership proved successful, the RJA membership would then consider the possibility of dropping its annual February conference and joining THF each October instead. Due to the ongoing need for social distancing, however, this year’s Fall Festival has been canceled. Since it is uncertain when it will be safe for people to socialize as usual, all plans are currently on hold. We will keep you informed of developments as they occur.

Fortunately, other RJA initiatives are untouched by the pandemic. The next issue of Jeffers Studies, for instance, is already in a preliminary phase of production. Also, a thorough revision of our website is nearing completion. Tim Hunt, with the assistance of Mick McAllister, has steered the project through a number of challenges, including a move to a more dependable host and the creation of a whole new set of operating protocols. In order to improve the look of the website, new graphics will be added soon.

Meanwhile, before life returns to “normal”—which means more human activity—we can all enjoy, so long as we stay healthy, the quiet city streets, cleaner air, and slower pace of life. Such immediate and apparent changes point to a reservoir of strength in nature. As Jeffers says in Metamorphoses, “the beauty of earth is a resilient wonderful thing, / It dies and lives, it is capable of many resurrections.” For an example, Jeffers describes a canyon where redwoods once stood in “hushed and holy” grandeur. Having been clear-cut for lumber, the canyon looks utterly cursed; only “Grim stumps remain, and naked raw earth torn by tractors.” But come back in two or three years, Jeffers says, “and see the vines hiding the stumps, the flowering bushes and vines; and here is the holy grass again.”

The same sort of recovery seems to be occurring now—after just a few weeks of quarantine, not years. In California, where I live, signs of it are everywhere. For the first time ever, my wife and I saw a Western Bluebird in our front yard. We’ve heard of sightings in the farmlands and orchards near the Sacramento River, but not in town. When it flew from an oak tree, the flash of brilliant blue was almost blinding. A friend of ours who lost his home in the nearby Camp Fire eighteen months ago (the fire that destroyed the entire town of Paradise, killed 85 people, and blackened an area the size of Chicago), returned to rebuild his life there. With far fewer people now living even quieter lives, nature is naturing. A black bear and her cub rambled through “his” property a couple of weeks ago; a few days later, he saw a mountain lion lounging in a nearby tree. In Yosemite and other wild places where the tourist population has suddenly disappeared, the old order is returning, with animals roaming the park freely. Come back in a million years, Jeffers says in Metamorphoses, “My God the place is beautiful! green sun-trap between the mountains, / The flashing stream sings in the light.”

A long view is one thing, but dealing with an immediate crisis is another. Fortunately, Jeffers has something to say about that, too. In The Poet in a Democracy, his 1941 address delivered at the Library of Congress on the eve of World War II, Jeffers reflects on the inevitable breakdown of civilization. “When at length it wears out and crumbles under us,” he says, “we can ‘plot the agony of resurrection’ and make a new age. Our business is to live. To live through . . . anything. And to keep alive, through everything, our ideal values, of freedom and courage, and mercy and tolerance.”

James Karman
Emeritus Professor
Department of English
Department of Comparative Religion and Humanities
California State University, Chico

We extend a warm welcome to new members of RJA: CORAL AMENDE, Incline Village, Nevada; BROOKS COLBURN, Westport, Connecticut; ED CROCKER, Norman, Oklahoma; JERRY FOWLER, Chico, California; GARIN HAY, Davis, California; KATIE PETERSON, Berkeley, California; ALBERT STRICKLAND, Capitola, California; and JULIET SPOHN TWOMEY, Carmel, California.

Congratulations to DEBORAH FLEMING, professor, poet, Jeffers scholar, and author of Towers of Myth & Stone: Yeats’s Influence on Robinson Jeffers (University of South Carolina Press, 2015), who recently won a major literary award. Her new book, Resurrection of the Wild: Meditations on Ohio’s Natural Landscape (Kent State University Press, 2019), won the 2020 PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay. Previous winners include Ursula K. Le Guin, Ian Buruma, and Robert Hass, so Deborah is in excellent company. The judges had this to say: “Fleming’s Ohio is a template for [the] planet, and her essays explore the zoology, botany, and anthropology of her home ground with astonishing specificity and Thoreauvian passion. Hummingbirds peck on her window if she is late serving up the nectar. The depredations of fracking and strip mining are described like the torture of [a] body. We meet the Amish in all their admirable, clannish, and cagey variations. The seasons come alive and then slumber. In places, this is an elegy: ‘The earth has made us what we are, sustains us, and will take us back again when we have seen our share of passing seasons.’ Elsewhere, it is joyful and hopeful: ‘We need only look around to see that nature is trying to show us the gate that will lead us back inside.’ Fleming’s work holds a key to that gate.” For more information see: https://pen.org/pen-diamonstein-spielvogel-award-for-the-art-of-the-essay/.

A book by and about Buddhist scholar and environmental activist JOANNA MACY, who spoke eloquently about Jeffers’ influence on her life and work at the Tor House Foundation Fall Festival in October 2019, has just been published. A description of the book, titled A Wild Love for the World: Joanna Macy and the Work of Our Time (Shambhala, 2020), is available here: https://www.shambhala.com/a-wild-love-for-the-world.html. Joanna is also featured in a series of articles titled “Joanna Macy and the Great Turning” in the May 2020 issue of Lion’s Roar. The issue includes an interview with editor Melvin McLeod: https://www.lionsroar.com/joanna-macy-on-the-great-awakening-the-planet-needs/.

Jeffers is referenced in an article by ROBERT ZALLER, “‘What’s Living but Courage?’: The Poetry of R. S. Thomas,” published in the Spring 2020 issue of Boulevard.

An article by DANA GIOIA, Poet Laureate Emeritus of California and former director of the National Endowment for the Arts, was published in the Winter 2020 issue of Fine Books & Collections. Titled “In Love with Language,” the illustrated article contains Gioia’s thoughts on “reading, writing, and collecting California authors”—including Jeffers.

ROB KAFKA was awarded the Lawrence Clark Powell Award for Distinguished Achievement at RJA’s February 2020 conference in Carmel—in recognition of his lifetime of service and accomplishment as a Jeffers scholar, editor of Jeffers Studies, and officer of RJA. Rob’s latest project, Visits to the British Isles, a transcription of the Jeffers family travel diaries from 1929, 1937, 1948, and 1956, is currently in the hands of Norris Pope, who is preparing the manuscript for publication by Tor House Press.

During the business meeting at the February conference, a new RJA Mission Statement was approved: “The Robinson Jeffers Association encourages and supports scholarly and critical work focused on or related to Robinson Jeffers, seeks to enhance awareness of and appreciation for Jeffers’ contributions to American and world literature across academic disciplines and for the general public, and sponsors programming and publications that advance these goals.”

“Vulture” by Robinson Jeffers is included in American Birds: A Literary Companion, edited by Andrew Rubenfeld and Terry Tempest Williams (Library of America, 2020).

Jeffers’ adaptation of Medea was performed in May 2019 by the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco. Directed by Peter J. Kuo, the innovative production was set in 1930s New Orleans. See: http://blog.act-sf.org/2019/04/nobody-puts-medea-or-dashwood-sisters.html and http://blog.act-sf.org/2018/12/act-welcomes-associate-conservatory.html.

Stories in Stone: Travels Through Urban Geology by David B. Williams, originally published in 2009, was reissued by the University of Washington Press in 2019. The book contains a new preface and features a chapter on Jeffers titled “Poetry in Stone—Carmel Granite.”

“Jeffers’ Axe: The Instability of Nonviolence,” an essay by Brian Glaser, was published in Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society, Volume 24, Issue 1 (March 2019), pp. 1–14.

Jeffers is among the many “Voices in Time” cited in Lapham’s Quarterly: Climate, Volume XII, Number 4 (Fall 2019).

A chapter titled “Without Meeting Each Other: Czech Mediators of Willa Cather and Robinson Jeffers” by Marcel Arbeit is included in Transatlantic Intellectual Networks, 1914–1964, edited by Hans Bak and Céline Mansanti (Cambridge Scholars, 2019)

The next issue of Jeffers Studies—with contributions by Richard Drake, Whitney Hoth, Tim Hunt, James Karman, and Robert Zaller—is on its way to the printer. It should be ready for distribution before the February conference.

Congratulations to Jeffers scholar Deborah Fleming

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