The Wreck of the Farallon

by kaweah

Under the grey deep, the plains, canyons, peaks,
the flooded floor of the world rolls on to Laurentia,
pressing on the Farallon, plank, mast, and sail
out ahead on a black stone wave,
driving her under the buoyant earth,
caught in the undertow of her
sunken bow, sinking deeper,
ever deeper under the world,
compressed and cooked, her wet soul bleeds out,
hot and convecting, boils stone,
hollows out Pluto’s chambers,
mothers strata of generations
of volcanic boils, dead, young, and dying,
trembling in the California sun.

When the great sea-world strikes the land,
the submarine ridge is crushed,
her mid-seam ripped ajar,
her bow pulled into the earth,
stern slammed into the continent’s edge;
all the wreckage tangled in a heap.

Here and there, the demolition done,
the old world digested, the continental belly
heaves up; Pacifica, Laurentia knock and shear
in their tectonic intercourse; mountain roots
severed and sucked off in the wake,
the subterranean bone of dead volcanoes floats up,
breaks through the surface; and seaward, bits of bone
shattered and blended with the sea-bottom
sediments of eons, and mother’s clotted blood.

© 2016 Kaweah

“Carmel Night” at Pebble Beach Lodge

by kaweah

Tonight the residents of Carmel will gather at Pebble Beach Lodge for a general good time.

R. J. McCabe, manager of the Lodge, rejoicing that Carmel is now an incorporated city, thinks this civic event should be properly celebrated.

It is Mr. McCabe’s desire that Carmel and Pebble Beach become more intimately united both socially and commercially.

To this end this affair has been arranged. Invitations have been mailed to a large number of local residents, who are requested to bring their visiting relatives and friends.

There will be interesting games with prizes, good music and special dances.

Everone [sic] should go. A 25c. round-trip fare has been arranged for and there will be no toll-gate charge.

Busses will leave from the Pine Cone office.

Carmel Pine Cone, November 22, 1916

Personality Disorders

by kaweah

Sam Barber, sitting in the redwood parlor playing Adagio
for Strings on the Steinway, and Una’s in the bathtub
running the cold tap with a pistol in her hand and a bullet
in her breast, her black broth bleeding out, making warm
curlicues all around her, an arm reaching out
for more sleeping pills.

Behind the piano, the door to the guest room is closed
for J.R. and his guest, romping on the deathbed
and I’m seasick on the heaving edge, looking out
the west window—the reaper in the surf.

Yeats, J.R.’s comrade is fog-white with age
and madness and running naked through the poppies
singing for the tatters in his coat and brandishing
Una’s best cleaver at the star-eyed tourists.

© 2016 Kaweah

RJA Carmel 2016

by kaweah

The Robinson Jeffers Association (RJA) Conference for 2016 in Carmel-by-the-Sea was a great learning opportunity as usual, though participation was somewhat low. The twofold fact that I was able to (1) recite my own poetry at Tor House and (2) present on the state of Carmel in 1916 (when it was incorporated, a century ago), probably says a lot about the present state of the RJA. That is to say that the RJA ought to be able to draw more legitimate contributors so that the likes of yours truly might be kept out of the spotlight.

I do think that Robinson Jeffers as a topic, plus the important themes that his work addresses, is important, current, and vital enough to draw in researchers and artists. I suppose I need to help promote the RJA, in spite of the fact that I am nobody.

Continue reading →

RJA 2016

by kaweah

The Robinson Jeffers Association (RJA) Conference for 2016 in Carmel-by-the-Sea was a great learning opportunity as usual, though participation was somewhat low. The twofold fact that I was able to (1) recite my own poetry at Tor House and (2) present on the state of Carmel in 1916 (when it was incorporated, a century ago), probably says a lot about the present state of the RJA. That is to say that the RJA ought to be able to draw more legitimate contributors so that the likes of yours truly might be kept out of the spotlight.

I do think that Robinson Jeffers as a topic, plus the important themes that his work addresses, is important enough to draw in researchers and artists. I suppose I need to help promote the RJA, in spite of the fact that I am nobody.

I do appreciate having been provided an opportunity to recite my poetry before the Jeffers community for the first time, and as well, to have been permitted to correct some common misconceptions about Jeffers and Carmel, albeit before a reduced Sunday audience.

Sunday was the 100th anniversary of Verdun, one of the most horrible slaughters in human history (the word ‘battle’ doesn’t seem to fit), so I started the morning off with a recitation of The Second Coming, a popular poem of Una’s idol William Butler Yeats. Next, I played a short movie consisting of images of old Monterey, Pebble Beach, Carmel, San Francisco from a hundred years ago—plus images from the Great War, to the music of It’s a Long Way to Tipperary, a popular anthem of the war. I really put the “Ken Burns effect” to work in the little music video. After that, I just reeled off a slue of slides to address the said misconceptions. In a nutshell, my point was that Jeffers sometimes made the Carmel Point of 1916 seem more remote,  rural, and wild than it actually had been. Jeffers was perfectly capable of “honeying his truth with lying” as he accused other poets of doing.

I hope I didn’t upset anybody too much. Nobody loves Jeffers’ poetry more than yours truly, but let’s do be honest. I can hardly imagine Jeffers himself seeing it any other way.

Falco urbanus

by kaweah

“Jeffers is my God.” — Charles Bukowski

When the blades of the falcon’s
    silhouette flash
Between the bright towers of the City
    we rub our eyes.
Pigeons squat in gutters
    on watch for shadows.
Not the ruddy-tailed buzzard
    the poet lionized;
Bagger of rodents, wounded birds,
    wayward fledglings,
Squats atop Tudor cottages and
    unicorn castles;
The brute too clumsy to thread
    a cypress hedge,
Hover above the moor, nosedive
    from infinity.

 Continue reading →

Rites of Disposal

by kaweah

When I’m finally done, when all
my smoldering embers go cold, put me away.
Clean me up, straighten me out, and put me in my box.

Take it up to that green landfill
where they dump such things
and label them with cut stones.
Find me a plot, dig me a hole.
Sow me deep like a pumpkin seed
that you don’t want to grow.
Cover me there with earth by the yard,
and if you must speak, be brief.

Continue reading →

The Poet is Dead

by kaweah

On this day in 1962, Robinson Jeffers gazed out to sea from his bed, then closed his eyes and died. It had been 75 years since he was born in a snowstorm. It had been 40 years since he discovered his muse—while building his 40-foot tower. It had also been 40 years since the last snowfall on the Monterey Peninsula. Jeffers never spoke a word, so far as I am aware, of the abandoned golf course that he built his house upon, nor did he acknowledge the existence of the newer course at Pebble Beach. Jeffers, it seems, was not very fond of golf. The morning after he died, 1.5″ of snow fell, causing the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am (the Crosby Clambake) to be postponed. The poet is dead. Long live his ghost!

A Drive to Oregon

by kaweah
Point Arena Light

Point Arena Light

For Thanksgiving Break 2015, the kid and I drove up the coast and through the Klamath Mountains to the Willamette Valley to visit Grandma, and from thence back through the Klamaths down to Mount Shasta and McCloud. We stayed the last night of the trip in a nice room above the shops in McCloud, and had dinner at a quaint, local pizza joint. McCloud struck me as a candidate for retirement, though perhaps not the best place to spend one’s final, feeble years.

Along the way, we stopped to see the sea-granite of Bodega Head, Point Arena, the coast redwoods of the Lady Bird Johnson Grove and Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park, plus a herd of Roosevelt elk crossing the highway.

For some unnumbered years I have been interested in the kinship between the Klamath Mountains and the Sierra Nevada. They seem to have been born together, split apart around Redding, California, and then pursued separate fates.

© 2015 Kaweah