The experience, however, started me thinking about the growing challenges we face in trying to preserve the past in today’s frenetic, novelty-obsessed, electronic culture. postage stamp.Eventually, we succeeded in raising the necessary funds, and Tor House survives as an exemplary public trust. Californians are notoriously indifferent to-and therefore ignorant of-their own remarkable history, even when it occurred down the street and involved a man who had been featured on the cover of Time and commemorated on a U.S. Yet I was slightly surprised at the nearly universal ignorance about Jeffers, though I might have expected it. I considered Jeffers a major American writer and the finest poet ever to emerge on the West Coast. Mine was hardly an unsympathetic assignment. ![]() My real job was to explain to wealthy and well-educated Carmel residents, many of whom had lived in the small seaside “village” for decades, who Robinson Jeffers was. What could be easier than to rally sophisticated Carmelites to save one of their leading landmarks?At the first benefit, I realized that my task was not primarily to ask for money or extol the cultural benefits of saving Tor House. Carmel was one of the richest towns in the United States, and it proudly celebrated itself as an arts community. ![]() Tor House, with its accompanying Hawk Tower, was a unique and strikingly beautiful home that had been built mostly by the writer himself on a spectacular point overlooking the Pacific Ocean. The home of a great American writer needed to be safeguarded for posterity by raising a significant but not enormous amount of money. Some local literati organized a campaign and a few out-of-town authors, including myself, were asked to help.The challenge seemed quite simple. ![]() Although a foundation had been created in 1978, it was a small volunteer group of limited resources. The family wanted to preserve the famed stone house, tower, and gardens, but they lacked the financial means. The poet’s son Donnan had died some years earlier, leaving a widow and a mortgage. California Poetry: From the Gold Rush to the Present, edited by Dana Gioia, Chryss Yost, and Jack HicksĪ little more than fifteen years ago, I joined a small group in Carmel that was raising money to save Robinson Jeffers’ Tor House.
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