The Poetry of Robinson Jeffers: A Big Read Documentary
From: National Endowment for the Arts
Series: The Big Read
Length: 26:54
The poetry of Robinson Jeffers is emotionally direct, magnificently musical, and philosophically profound. No one has ever written more powerfully about the natural beauty of the American West. Determined to write a truthful poetry purged of ephemeral things, Jeffers cultivated a style at once lyrical, tough-minded, and timeless.
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Piece Description
The poetry of Robinson Jeffers is emotionally direct, magnificently musical, and philosophically profound. No one has ever written more powerfully about the natural beauty of the American West. Determined to write a truthful poetry purged of ephemeral things, Jeffers cultivated a style at once lyrical, tough-minded, and timeless.
Transcript
LITERARY LANDMARKS: ROBINSON JEFFERS
AUDIO GUIDE SCRIPT
R. Davis: The extraordinary patience of things!
This beautiful place defaced with a crop of surburban houses-
How beautiful when we first beheld it,
Unbroken field of poppy and lupin walled with clean cliffs;
No intrusion but two or three horses pasturing,
Or a few milch cows rubbing their flanks on the outcrop rockheads-
Now the spoiler has come: does it care?
Not faintly. It has all time. It knows the people are a tide
That swells and in time will ebb, and all
Their works dissolve. Meanwhile the image of the pristine beauty
Lives in the very grain of the granite,
Safe as the endless ocean that climbs our cliff.-As for us:
We must uncenter our minds from ourselves;
We must unhumanize our views a little, and become confident
As the rock and ocean that we were made from.
JR: That was radio and television host Robert Aubrey Davis...
Read the full transcript
Musical Works
| Title | Artist | Album | Label | Year | Length |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cello Suite No. 4 in E flat major | Alexander Rudin (Bach) | Bach: Complete Cello Suites. | Naxos of America | 2002 | 00:00 |
| Piano Sonata No. 28 in A major, Op. 101 | Seymour Lipkin (Beethoven) | Beethoven: The Complete Sonatas Vol. 3. | Newport Classic, Ltd. | 2004 | 00:00 |
| Mandan Heartbreak Song | Arranged by Jovino Santos Neto (Real Angle Music, BMI); and "Traces of Hope," arranged by Gary Stroutsos and Jovino Santos Neto | People of the Willows. | Makocheé Recording Company | 1999 | 00:00 |
Additional Credits
Produced by Pepper Smith at the National Endowment for the Arts, 2009.
Executive Producer: Josephine Reed
Assistant Producers: Adam Kampe and Liz Mehaffey
Thanks to Erika Koss, Larry Kraman, and Ted Libbey. Special thanks to Ariane de Pree-Kajfez at Stanford University Press.
"Carmel Point," "Tor House," "Shine, Perishing Republic," "Evening Ebb," "Vulture," and "Rock and Hawk" from The selected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers, edited by Tim Hunt (2001), used by permission of Stanford University Press.
Excerpts from "De Rerum Virtute" and "Tor House," from The Selected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers, Copyright 1935 and Copyright 1963 by Donnan Jeffers and Garth Jeffers. Used by permission of Random House, Inc.
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