Many know the great American poets of the 19th century--Whitman, Poe, and Dickinson, for example--and the 20th century's Robert Frost and e.e. cummings. After this the field begins to thin.

    My favorite poet in this second rank (of fame, not necessarily of talent) is Robinson Jeffers (1887-1962). He lived and worked in Carmel, south of San Francisco on the California coast, and his poetry is filled with imagery of the natural and historical environment there. Something of a mystic, he built with his own hands a house and, notably, a tower of stone overlooking the sea, calling to mind the Irish mystical poet Yeats's residence in Thoor Ballylee.

    Jeffers was born in Pennsylvania. His father was a minister; his brother was an astronomer. Jeffers' work reflected these dual interests--spirituality and the universe. He was something of a child prodigy, starting college in Los Angeles at 16, already able to read Greek and Latin.

    While doing graduate work, Jeffers entered into an affair with the wife of a local attorney. The scandal was front-page news, so after a time--and a divorce--the couple married, fled Los Angeles, and settled on the sparsely-populated coast. This was more than a fling. The devoted couple remained together until Una's death after 37 years of marriage. Jeffers never remarried.

    Jeffers was an outdoorsman, and developed a philosophy he called "Inhumanism." He felt that humans gave too much importance to themselves, and not enough to nature, the "astonishing beauty of things." Many of his poems celebrated the persistence of nature over the impermanence of humanity's whims.

    In "Natural Music," for example, he wrote of "The old voice of the ocean" versus the "storm of the sick nations," and concludes that the voices of nature are pure, "like some girl's breathing who dances alone / By the ocean-shore, dreaming of lovers."

    Robinson Jeffers died 12 years after his beloved Una, and their ashes are buried under a tree in the courtyard of the house they built.

    Vocabulary: Which word above means:

    1. event or behavior that causes people to gossip

    2. child with amazing abilities

    3. continuing to do something, even when it's difficult

    4. describes something easily changed

    5. dear, precious

    6. with few people living in it

    7. made up of two parts

    8. changeable, silly wishes

    9. person who enjoys hunting, fishing, hiking, etc.

    10. as opposed to, against

    ANSWERS: 1. scandal 2. prodigy 3. persistence 4. impermanence 5. beloved 6. sparsely-populated 7. dual 8. whims 9. outdoorsman 10. versus