[lit-ideas] Re: Leavis on "Great" poetry
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 19 Sep 2013 15:56:42 -0400 (EDT)
In a message dated 9/19/2013 3:32:59 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
gearyservice@xxxxxxxxx quotes from Jeffers, as per ps.
Yes, he was a great poet. And Wiki agrees!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robinson_Jeffers
Thanks for sharing, In a rare recording, Jeffers can be heard reading his
"The Day Is A Poem" (September 19, 1939) on Poetry Speaks – Hear Great Poets
Read Their Work from Tennyson to Plath, Narrated by Charles Osgood
(Sourcebooks, Inc., c2001), Disc 1, #41; including text, with Robert Hass on
Robinson Jeffers, pp. 88–95. Jeffers was also on the cover of Time – The
Weekly
Magazine, April 4, 1932 (pictured on p. 90. Poetry Speaks).
--- Nota Bene the reference above to: "Hear GREAT poets [including Jeffers]
read their work -- from Tennyson to Plath".
The Wiki adds that his wife played the melodeon, which helped:
"In Una's special room on the second floor were kept many of her favorite
items, photographs of Jeffers taken by the artist Weston, plants and dried
flowers from Shelley's grave, and a rosewood melodeon which she loved to
play."
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=melodion&searc
hmode=none
melodeon (n.) Look up melodeon at Dictionary.com1847, variant of melodion,
from German Melopdoin, from Melodie, from Old French melodie (see melody).
Note that in German there is a VERY intrusive 'p': "melopdoin' -- but
Goethe often omitted it ("for phonetical reasons", as he was prone to say).
Cheers,
Speranza
--
Jeffers:
all the arts lose virtue
against the essential reality
of creatures going about their business among the equally
earnest elements of nature.
Here is a symbol in which
Many high tragic thoughts
Watch their own eyes.
This gray rock, standing tall
On the headland, where the sea-wind
Lets no tree grow,
Earthquake-proved, and signatured
By ages of storms: on its peak
A falcon has perched.
I think, here is your emblem
To hang in the future sky;
Not the cross, not the hive,
But this; bright power, dark peace;
Fierce consciousness joined with final
Disinterestedness;
Life with calm death; the falcon’s
Realist eyes and act
Married to the massive
Mysticism of stone,
Which failure cannot cast down
Nor success make proud.
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