___________ Kee AvilHHHH ‘Crease is the debut album by Kee Avil, a project led by Montréal producer and guitarist Vicky Mettler: a singular expression of fractured dream logic concretized in chiselled postpunk guitar, sinuous low-end electronics, a panoply of organic and digital samples creating alternately twitchy and propulsive rhythm, and the anxious intimacy of her finely wrought lyricism and vocals. Bound by an outstanding production sensibility throughout, Crease unfolds one oblique earworm hook after another, with compositional innovation anchored to an inscrutable and compelling voice across 10 songs of tremendous and imaginative sonic detail.’— CST Records
_________________ YEAH YOUSkin (I Have Only Lived Once) ‘To you YEAH YOU are to you a father daughter duo who let music invade the family context. Who let music dismantle the family car, using construct absurdity to redeem resented weekly Tesco shops and traffic jams. YEAH YOU are not who you said we are, but we are that inverted, and battery op. The content shifts depending on how many supermarket discounts we found. Known for their sneak-up picnic public invasions, perform mostly when uninvited but will always jump on chance to berate a strobe-cut stage, brawling electronic dirt pop, words and feet exert integral (instagram) distrust: you won’t hear what you see.’— Cafe Oto
_________________ Franck VigrouxLame ‘Working with his long time visual partner Antoine Schmitt, ATOTAL is Franck Vigroux’s uncompromising signature sound of colossal electronic music and an audiovisual performance aiming to reconstruct in order to better deconstruct the processes of imposition of will by repetition and absolute synchronism, to propose a breach to a potentially life-saving decoincidence. The total work of art, when pushed to its paroxysm of absolute coincidence of the perceptions of a captive spectator, is similar to the techniques of mental manipulation of totalitarian regimes, proceeding by annihilation of the critical mind, repetitive semantic pounding, subliminal messages.’— Tailored Communication
_________________ AnadolGizli Duygular ‘Anadol is a very Postmodern Turkish artist — the influence of Turkish pop and Arabesk music can be heard, but also folk, chanson, Greek music, US rock and jazz. In Atila’s hands, what might sound like a grisly confection emerges as deliciously fluid, gliding across genres to create something kaleidoscopic and engrossing. The recruitment of Istanbul jazz musicians to flesh out her vision means that the music here is immaculately realised, but it also has the grit and grain of great hiphop.’— Neil Kulkarni,The Wire
________________ Keeley ForsythI Stand Alone ‘Forsyth’s grounding in the theatrical arts feeds directly into her music. There’s no sense of pretense on Limbs—quite the opposite. But her training seems to give her the command to channel difficult emotions with the steely composure of a ballet dancer. Forsyth mentioned the influence of Pina Bausch, the German dancer and choreographer whose dramatic, physical pieces drew their power from the raw material of trauma. You can hear that sense throughout Limbs; that drama of the everyday, accentuated into something carefully measured but utterly intense.’— Louis Pattison
________________ Flower-Corsano DuoThe Ship That Sailed on Dry Land ‘Since 2007’s brilliant “The Radiant Mirror”, Flower-Corsano Duo have occupied an idiosyncratic space in the musical spectrum. Who else exactly is looking to build a power duo from improv drums and electrified shahi baaja sounds? The duo don’t release much either, so a new set from them is always worth a peek, and on this one Corsano sounds more energetic than ever, working his kit in tides rather than rhythms, leaving Flower to fire shards of harmonic noise from his instrument.’— Trippy Jam
______________ NAPPYNAPPAWilderness ‘Echoing with laughter, repetitious piano lines and sampled words of wisdom, the production veers into slicker territory than NAPPYNAPPA’s previous LP, 2020’s IFEELJUSTLYKTHEIRART. The driving force behind these ten tracks is NAPPYNAPPA’s unique voice, tapping into his perspective on capitalism, corporations and violence. Twisting over and back, the Washington DC’s rapper’s rhymes follow unusual patterns and keep the listener focused on what he has to say next.’— Loud and Quiet
______________ Yasuaki ShimizuMomo No Hana ‘Kiren stands out for more than just its sonics. Unlike most of Shimizu’s releases, it wasn’t intended for a record label. Instead, it was the product of the freedom he had while collaborating with Aki Ikuta, the late producer who was instrumental to his music’s sound. You can hear his boundary-pushing ideas on “Momo No Hana.” It begins with an extended passage of queasy ambience before Shimizu throws in additional noises to subvert expectations: high-pitched synth tones, a spectral growl, and a noise that sounds like a warped Banjo-Kazooie voiceline. Then there’s an instrument that recalls his affection for Indian classical music, and then a plunderphonic loop that anticipates Oneohtrix Point Never’s Replica shockingly well.’— Joshua Minsoo Kim
______________ Kill AltersSlow Heat ‘Listening to the maddening and momentous work of Kill Alters could inspire you to either laugh or scream. Both reactions are welcome—and are often returned by bandleader Bonnie Baxter, who performs with an ecstatic intensity that blurs the two extremes. While this marks the first album in five years from the deliriously psychedelic NYC noise outfit, which also includes Nicos Kennedy and drummer Hisham Bharoocha, Baxter has maintained a breakneck pace in both solo work and other collaborations. Armed To The Teeth accentuates Kill Alters’s immense sense of space and tension better than any prior release.’— Hausu Mountain Records
________________ Nik Colk VoidInterruption Is Good ‘Nik Colk Void is well established with her work – using modular systems, voice and guitar – as one half of Factory Floor, one third of Carter Tutti Void (alongside Chris Carter and Cosey Fanni Tutti) and with the late Peter Rehberg as NPVR, but perhaps surprisingly, Bucked Up Space is her first solo album release. Bucked up Space is the result of the ideas and resulting sounds of free exploration morphing into a personal structured album that fearlessly moulds patience, listening and restraint. It’s a sharp focussed work embracing collective action through the lens of the self. All this, and also one of the best abstract dance records you will hear in some time!’— Editions Mego
_____________ Simona ZamboliFaro ‘Simona Zambolis first album “Ethernity” is a piece of haunting music – vibrating, pulsing and cutting through the concrete and the chaos at the same time, when you listen close enough. The album is a journey through trans-reality, not only as a melancholic drama, but also as a travel to alien worlds.’— Serendeepity
______________ BUÑUELWhen God Used A Rope ‘Buñuel acts as a sort of super group. The mostly-Italian quartet features Oxbow‘s Eugene S. Robinson in his usual lead role. Other performers in the group include guitarist Xabier Iriondo, drummer Francesco Valente, and bassist Andrea Lombardini. Each musician brings a very distinct background to the table, which creates a sound that proves difficult to pin down. The easiest categorizations, noise rock and post-punk, fail to capture the full experience. Instead, Killers Like Us is a blitz of untamed, unchecked testosterone.’— boolin tunes
______________ Natasha BarrettUrban Melt in Park Palais Meran ‘When did that walk in the woods get weird? Was it the cracked branch beneath your feet, the pines looming larger overhead, or the wind at your ankles, a little colder than before? Electroacoustic composer Natasha Barrett’s stunning ‘Heterotopia’ is as ingenious as it is unsettling, using the estranging qualities of immersive audio to tweak at the edges of the intangible.’— The state51 Conspiracy
______________ HolodrumFree Advice ‘Holodrum’s debut LP is a vehicle of abandon and sincerity that manages to capture the gut-punch feeling of the live experience. ‘Free Advice’’ the first “new” track on the record, is a snappy jammer focused on the interplay between sparkling synths and groovy Clavinet, and rounded out by a sassy back and forth between Shjipstone and Garner – the latter doing her best Tom Tom Club throughout. Besides being a hell of a lot of fun, this record is a vehicle of sincerity and abandon – and genuine appreciation. This is a group that doesn’t keep anything at arm’s length. If it’s in their sound, they embrace it, redirecting that enthusiasm toward the listener.’— Bernie Brooks
______________ Terry RileyShri Camel, Morning Corona (Part One) ‘Shri Camel is a meditative masterwork blending the feeling of eastern music with the futuristic electronic technologies of the West (Japan actually!). Riley had been studying with North Indian raga master Pandit Pran Nath for years in search of swara “or the knowledge of profound pitch relationships which reigns supreme.” The organ sounds are generated here through a modified Yamaha keyboard tuned to unequal temperament to permit scales used in non-Western music. There are also as many as 16 organ voices running and interacting simultaneously here creating a sort of one man orchestral improvisation.’— In Sheep’s Clothing Hi-Fi
______________ AngusrazeInterface Overload II ‘This song is a sequel to a song about Rozey Cheekx’s Soozie, and is presented a semi-sarcastic look into art and the dissolving of identity in the quest for attention or fame. ‘Interface Overload II’ extends the narrative to the idea of something corrupting that attention and fame Soozie receives. In the film, we are shown Soozie entering some sort of performance space for an audition, she dances and performs to this song as we see several angles of her performance in a CCTV-style observational fashion. It’s intrusive, and it brings to light the contrast between celebrity glamour and internal turmoil, with lines like ‘I know that light can relight the spark that will burn her.’’— Angusraze
*
p.s. Hey. ** Brandon, Hi. About 2/3 of the people I know here in Paris either have a cold or Covid at the moment, so yeah. Feel better, obvs. Congrats on the septum pierce. It’s funny that people are afraid of things like that. I guess they’re afraid that you’re going to change into some kind of different, unpredictable person who won’t want to be their friend anymore? I don’t know. Anyway, sounds like its effect is a thumbs up so far, and you can always undo it if you get bored by your new face or whatever. I’m good, super busy with tons of stuff to do with the new film, kind of swamped, but it’s okay. I hear it’s going be weirdly hot outside where you are today. Hope it isn’t too nasty, but I’m a heat hating person, so … I hope your health is perfect and invisible again. ** Ian, Congrats on the post-weed progress. Vietnamese food … that sounds so good. I’m gonna find some, as opposed to make some because I’m microwave-only kind of cook. I, of course, hope your project ends up feeling commitable, but that’s easy for me to say. Reading proposal? I have a ‘5 books I loved’ post coming up on Saturday, but generally when people ask me that question my go-to recommendation is Agota Kristof’s novel trilogy ‘The Book of Lies’. I think it’s an unsung total masterpiece. So maybe that? ** kier, Hi, Kier! Yeah, I think most people even in the US who weren’t cogent when he was a big deal in the 60s/70s won’t know his name much less his stuff. Studio dog! Me too: a little too much going on with me too, but it’s a good too much least. Exciting about your upcoming show. 100% sure that you’ll ace it like crazy. Oh, you’re in Bergen now. Or about to go. Wait, it’s your birthday? Happy Big One! My day? Not too exciting. I’m writing Gisele Vienne’s new piece, so I spent most of the day doing that interrupted by phone calls and emails with people to set up things for the film shoot in September, and I did an interview because ‘I Wished’ comes out here on Friday. So I was mostly stuck to the computer, alas. Yes, the road trip. Zac is currently studying to get his driver’s license renewed because it has expired, in no small part with the goal of being able to drive the car that will take all of us on that very road trip you mentioned. So, yes! I’m seeing Zac in an hour, and I will hug him, etc. for you. Have huge fun in Bergen if you see this before you leave!!! Love, me. ** David Ehrenstein, Yes. I wonder if he’ll get a revival of interest. Seems inevitable, I guess. ** Dominik, Hi!!! So, it was your birthday yesterday or the day before, right? Happy happy in retrospect! The world that doesn’t just involve the likes of us artists and our scene sucks! Mm, I think the interview might just be in French, actually, but I’m not totally sure. I’ll find out eventually. Goosebumps are the best! Thank you! What’s that lyric from? Love selfishly making the DP we want to work with on our new film and who we’re meeting with in about 90 minutes say yes because we really, really want to work with her, G. ** Misanthrope, Well, it’ll be even more epic, which I suppose is a good thing since people so often seem to equate a novel’s length with its importance. Oh, shit, sorry about your mom. I hope they can just unzip that thing from her face lickety-split. ** Bill, Yeah, you can drive a little ways down the coast and see them if you want to. They don’t look all that exciting though. It’s true about his poetry, yeah. Taxes, double if not even triple argh. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. I agree about its not total comprehensibility and simultaneous appropriateness for contemporaneous virality. ** Thomas Moronic, Hi, T! I’ll check my schedule and see if I can, re: McDowell, and Ethiopian food has the power to rearrange my schedule if necessary. Ooh, new novel angling … extremely good news! Wow, I wonder why the blog is behaving itself. I really don’t understand this place’s extreme moodiness at all. But yay! Hope that sticks. ** Right. I made you all a gig of a bunch of tracks I’ve been into in recent days, and there’s some quite worthy stuff in there, if I don’t say so myself, so have a listen and look please, thanks. See you tomorrow.
“Jeffers? He just laid blood on the paper. Unbelievable.” – Charles Bukowski, in a letter to Beat Magazine, 1991
Robinson Jeffers is one of those rarified artists who induces a speechless reverence in me. He is quite possibly my favorite of all poets (the only other contenders would be Catullus, Bukowski and Li Po) and his work has had a tremendous impact and influence on my own, as well as on my worldview and sensibility. Reading Jeffers, I have found a kindred spirit, yet also a soul so ennobling that my own is invariably enriched. Just reading a single poem, or even a line, of Jeffers’ is enough to lift me out of the greatest misery.
This day is a tribute to the mad, reckless genius of Robinson Jeffers. The biographical information provided here is only rudimentary Wikipedia material, since I think that the reading of a selection of Jeffers’ poems is far more important than going over his life date by date and also gives one far more insight into his art and person. I have also illustrated this text with various images of Big Sur, the surrounding to which his work is so inextricably linked.
Life and Poetic Career
Jeffers was born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania (now part of Pittsburgh), the son of a Presbyterian minister and biblical scholar, Reverend Dr. William Hamilton Jeffers, and Annie Robinson Tuttle. His brother was Hamilton Jeffers, who became a well-known astronomer, working at Lick Observatory. His family was supportive of his interest in poetry. He traveled through Europe during his youth and attended school in Switzerland. He was a child prodigy, interested in classics and Greek and Latin language and literature. At sixteen he entered Occidental College. At school, he was an avid outdoorsman, and active in the school’s literary society.
After he graduated from Occidental, Jeffers went to the University of Southern California to study medicine. He met Una Call Kuster in 1906; she was three years his senior, a graduate student, and the wife of a Los Angeles attorney. In 1910, he enrolled as a forestry student at the University of Washington in Seattle, a course of study that he abandoned after less than one year, at which time he returned to Los Angeles. Sometime before this, he and Una had begun an affair that became a scandal, reaching the front page of the Los Angeles Times in 1912. After Una spent some time in Europe to quiet things down, the two were married in 1913, and moved to Carmel, California, where Jeffers constructed Tor House and Hawk Tower. The couple had a daughter who died a day after birth in 1914, and then twin sons in 1916. Una died of cancer in 1950. Jeffers died in 1962.
In the 1920s and 1930s, at the height of his popularity, Jeffers was famous for being a tough outdoorsman, living in relative solitude and writing of the difficulty and beauty of the wild. He spent most of his life in Carmel, California, in a granite house that he had built himself called “Tor House and Hawk Tower”. “Tor” is a Celtic term describing a large outcropping of rock.
Before Jeffers and Una purchased the land where Tor House would be built, they rented a small cottage in Carmel, and enjoyed many afternoon walks and picnics at the “tors” near the site that would become Tor House.
To build the first part of Tor House, a small, two story cottage, Jeffers hired a local builder. He worked with the builder,and in this short, informal apprenticeship, he learned the art of stonemasonry. He continued adding on to Tor House throughout his life, writing in the mornings and working on the house in the afternoon. Many of his poems reflect the influence of stone and building on his life.
He later built a large four-story stone tower on the site called Hawk Tower, based on similar structures he had seen while traveling through Ireland. Construction on Tor House continued into the late 1950s and early 1960s, and was completed by his eldest son. The completed residence was used as a family home until his descendants decided to turn it over to the Tor House Foundation, formed by Ansel Adams, for historic preservation. The romantic Gothic tower was named after a hawk that appeared while Jeffers was working on the structure, and which disappeared the day it was completed. The tower was a gift for his wife Una, who had a fascination for Irish literature and stone towers. In Una’s special room at the top 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. The tower also included a secret interior staircase — a source of great fun for his young sons.
During this time Jeffers published volumes of long narrative blank verse that shook up the national literary scene. These poems, including Tamar and Roan Stallion, introduced Jeffers as a master of the epic form, reminiscent of ancient Greek poets. These poems were full of controversial subject matter like incest, murder and parricide. Jeffers’ short verse includes “Hurt Hawks”, “The Purse-Seine”, and “Shine, Perishing Republic”. His intense relationship with the physical world is described in often brutal and apocalyptic verse, and demonstrates a preference for the natural world over what he sees as the negative influence of civilization. Jeffers did not accept the idea that meter is a fundamental part of poetry, and, like Marianne Moore, claimed his verse was not composed in meter, but “rolling stresses”. He believed meter was imposed on poetry by man, not a fundamental part of its nature.
Initially, Tamar and Other Poems received no acclaim, but when East Coast reviewers discovered the work and began to compare Jeffers to Greek tragedians, Boni & Liveright reissued an expanded edition as Roan Stallion, Tamar and Other Poems (1925). In these works, Jeffers began to articulate themes that contributed to what he later identified as Inhumanism. Mankind was too self-centered, he complained, and too indifferent to the “astonishing beauty of things”. Jeffers’s longest and most ambitious narrative, The Women at Point Sur (1927), startled many of his readers, heavily loaded as it was with Nietzschean philosophy. The balance of the 1920s and the early 1930s were especially productive for Jeffers, and his reputation was secure. In 1934, he made the acquaintance of the philosopher J Krishnamurti and was struck by the force of Krishnamurti’s person. He wrote a poem entitled “Credo” which many feel refers to Krishnamurti. In Cawdor and Other Poems (1928), Dear Judas and Other Poems (1929), Descent to the Dead, Poems Written in Ireland and Great Britain (1931), Thurso’s Landing (1932), and Give Your Heart to the Hawks (1933), Jeffers continued to explore the questions of how human beings could find their proper relationship (free of human egocentrism) with the divinity of the beauty of things. These poems, set in the Big Sur region (except Dear Judas and Descent to the Dead), enabled Jeffers to pursue his belief that the natural splendor of the area demanded tragedy: the greater the beauty, the greater the demand. As Euripides had, Jeffers began to focus more on his own characters’ psychologies and on social realities than on the mythic. The human dilemmas of Phaedra, Hippolytus, and Medea fascinated him.
Many books followed Jeffers’ initial success with the epic form, including an adaptation of Euripides’ Medea, which became a hit Broadway play starring Dame Judith Anderson. D. H. Lawrence, Edgar Lee Masters, Benjamin De Casseres, and George Sterling were close friends of Jeffers, Sterling having the longest and most intimate relationship with him. While living in Carmel, Jeffers became the focal point for a small but devoted group of admirers. At the peak of his fame, he was one of the few poets to be featured on the cover of Time Magazine. He was also asked to read at the Library of Congress, and was posthumously put on a U.S. Stamp.
Part of the decline of Jeffers popularity was due to his staunch opposition to the United States’ entering World War II. In fact, his book The Double Axe and Other Poems (1948), a volume of poems that was largely critical of U.S. policy, came with an extremely unconventional note from Random House that the views expressed by Jeffers were not those of the publishing company. Soon after, his work was received negatively by several influential literary critics. Several particularly scathing pieces were penned by Yvor Winters, as well as by Kenneth Rexroth, who had been very positive in his earlier commentary on Jeffers’ work. Jeffers would publish poetry intermittently during the 1950s but his poetry never again attained the same degree of popularity that it had in the 1920s and the 1930s. Some expect a revival in Jeffers’ work in the near future, especially with the 2001 publication of his collected poems by Stanford University Press and the rising popularity of ecocriticism in literary theory.
Inhumanism
Jeffers was an advocate for inhumanism, the belief that mankind is too self-centered and too indifferent to the “astonishing beauty of things.” Articulated in the first half of the 1900s, inhumanism views that humans may strive, but will always be unable to “uncenter” themselves. Furthermore Inhumanism called for “a shifting of emphasis and significance from man to notman; the rejection of human solipsism and recognition of the transhuman magnificence…. This manner of thought and feeling is neither misanthropic nor pessimist…. It offers a reasonable detachment as rule of conduct, instead of love, hate and envy…. it provides magnificence for the religious instinct, and satisfies our need to admire greatness and rejoice in beauty.”
Poetry
Be Angry at the Sun
That public men publish falsehoods
Is nothing new. That America must accept
Like the historical republics corruption and empire
Has been known for years.
Be angry at the sun for setting
If these things anger you. Watch the wheel slope and turn,
They are all bound on the wheel, these people, those warriors.
This republic, Europe, Asia.
Observe them gesticulating,
Observe them going down. The gang serves lies, the passionate
Man plays his part; the cold passion for truth
Hunts in no pack.
You are not Catullus, you know,
To lampoon these crude sketches of Caesar. You are far
From Dante’s feet, but even farther from his dirty
Political hatreds.
Let boys want pleasure, and men
Struggle for power, and women perhaps for fame,
And the servile to serve a Leader and the dupes to be duped.
Yours is not theirs.
Contemplation Of The Sword
Reason will not decide at last; the sword will decide.
The sword: an obsolete instrument of bronze or steel,
formerly used to kill men, but here
In the sense of a symbol. The sword: that is: the storms
and counter-storms of general destruction; killing of men,
Destruction of all goods and materials; massacre, more or
less intentional, of children and women;
Destruction poured down from wings, the air made accomplice,
the innocent air
Perverted into assasin and poisoner.
The sword: that is: treachery and cowardice, incredible
baseness, incredible courage, loyalties, insanities.
The sword: weeping and despair, mass-enslavement,
mass-tourture, frustration of all hopes
That starred man’s forhead. Tyranny for freedom, horror for
happiness, famine for bread, carrion for children.
Reason will not decide at last, the sword will decide.
Dear God, who are the whole splendor of things and the sacred
stars, but also the cruelty and greed, the treacheries
And vileness, insanities and filth and anguish: now that this
thing comes near us again I am finding it hard
To praise you with a whole heart.
I know what pain is, but pain can shine. I know what death is,
I have sometimes
Longed for it. But cruelty and slavery and degredation,
pestilence, filth, the pitifulness
Of men like hurt little birds and animals . . . if you were only
Waves beating rock, the wind and the iron-cored earth,
With what a heart I could praise your beauty.
You will not repent, nor cancel life, nor free man from anguish
For many ages to come. You are the one that tortures himself to
discover himself: I am
One that watches you and discovers you, and praises you in little
parables, idyl or tragedy, beautiful Intolerable God.
The sword: that is:
I have two sons whom I love. They are twins, they were born
in nineteen sixteen, which seemed to us a dark year
Of a great war, and they are now of the age
That war prefers. The first-born is like his mother, he is so beautiful
That persons I hardly know have stopped me on the street to
speak of the grave beauty of the boy’s face.
The second-born has strength for his beauty; when he strips
for swimming the hero shoulders and wrestler loins
Make him seem clothed. The sword: that is: loathsome disfigurements,
blindness, mutilation, locked lips of boys
Too proud to scream.
Reason will not decide at last: the sword will decide.
Ascent To The Sierras
Beyond the great valley an odd instinctive rising
Begins to possess the ground, the flatness gathers
to little humps and
barrows, low aimless ridges,
A sudden violence of rock crowns them. The crowded
orchards end, they
have come to a stone knife;
The farms are finished; the sudden foot of the
slerra. Hill over hill,
snow-ridge beyond mountain gather
The blue air of their height about them.
Here at the foot of the pass
The fierce clans of the mountain you’d think for
thousands of years,
Men with harsh mouths and eyes like the eagles’ hunger,
Have gathered among these rocks at the dead hour
Of the morning star and the stars waning
To raid the plain and at moonrise returning driven
Their scared booty to the highlands, the tossing horns
And glazed eyes in the light of torches. The men have
looked back
Standing above these rock-heads to bark laughter
At the burning granaries and the farms and the town
That sow the dark flat land with terrible rubies…
lighting the dead…
It is not true: from this land
The curse was lifted; the highlands have kept peace
with the valleys; no
blood in the sod; there is no old sword
Keeping grim rust, no primal sorrow. The people are
all one people, their
homes never knew harrying;
The tribes before them were acorn-eaters, harmless
as deer. Oh, fortunate
earth; you must find someone
To make you bitter music; how else will you take bonds
of the future,
against the wolf in men’s hearts?
Carmel Point
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.
On Building With Stone
To be an ape in little of the mountain-making mother
Like swarthy Cheops, but my own hands
For only slaves, is a far sweeter toil than to cut
Passions in verse for a sick people.
I’d liefer bed one boulder in the house-wall than be the time’s
Archilochus: we name not Homer: who now
Can even imagine the fabulous dawn when bay-leaves (to a blind
Beggar) were not bitter in the teeth?
Meditation On Saviors
I
When I considered it too closely, when I wore it like an element
and smelt it like water,
Life is become less lovely, the net nearer than the skin, a
little troublesome, a little terrible.
I pledged myself awhile ago not to seek refuge, neither in death
nor in a walled garden,
In lies nor gated loyalties, nor in the gates of contempt, that
easily lock the world out of doors.
Here on the rock it is great and beautiful, here on the foam-wet
granite sea-fang it is easy to praise
Life and water and the shining stones: but whose cattle are the
herds of the people that one should love them?
If they were yours, then you might take a cattle-breeder’s
delight in the herds of the future. Not yours.
Where the power ends let love, before it sours to jealousy.
Leave the joys of government to Caesar.
Who is born when the world wanes, when the brave soul of the
world falls on decay in the flesh increasing
Comes one with a great level mind, sufficient vision, sufficient
blindness, and clemency for love.
This is the breath of rottenness I smelt; from the world
waiting, stalled between storms, decaying a little,
Bitterly afraid to be hurt, but knowing it cannot draw the
savior Caesar but out of the blood-bath.
The apes of Christ lift up their hands to praise love: but
wisdom without love is the present savior,
Power without hatred, mind like a many-bladed machine subduing
the world with deep indifference.
The apes of Christ itch for a sickness they have never known;
words and the little envies will hardly
Measure against that blinding fire behind the tragic eyes they
have never dared to confront.
II
Point Lobos lies over the hollowed water like a humped whale
swimming to shoal; Point Lobos
Was wounded with that fire; the hills at Point Sur endured it;
the palace at Thebes; the hill Calvary.
Out of incestuous love power and then ruin. A man forcing the
imaginations of men,
Possessing with love and power the people: a man defiling his
own household with impious desire.
King Oedipus reeling blinded from the palace doorway, red tears
pouring from the torn pits
Under the forehead; and the young Jew writhing on the domed hill
in the earthquake, against the eclipse
Frightfully uplifted for having turned inward to love the
people: -that root was so sweet O dreadful agonist? –
I saw the same pierced feet, that walked in the same crime to
its expiation; I heard the same cry.
A bad mountain to build your world on. Am I another keeper of
the people, that on my own shore,
On the gray rock, by the grooved mass of the ocean, the
sicknesses I left behind me concern me?
Here where the surf has come incredible ways out of the splendid
west, over the deeps
Light nor life sounds forever; here where enormous sundowns
flower and burn through color to quietness;
Then the ecstasy of the stars is present? As for the people, I
have found my rock, let them find theirs.
Let them lie down at Caesar’s feet and be saved; and he in his
time reap their daggers of gratitude.
III
Yet I am the one made pledges against the refuge contempt, that
easily locks the world out of doors.
This people as much as the sea-granite is part of the God from
whom I desire not to be fugitive.
I see them: they are always crying. The shored Pacific makes
perpetual music, and the stone mountains
Their music of silence, the stars blow long pipings of light:
the people are always crying in their hearts.
One need not pity; certainly one must not love. But who has seen
peace, if he should tell them where peace
Lives in the world…they would be powerless to understand; and
he is not willing to be reinvolved.
IV
How should one caught in the stone of his own person dare tell
the people anything but relative to that?
But if a man could hold in his mind all the conditions at once,
of man and woman, of civilized
And barbarous, of sick and well, of happy and under torture, of
living and dead, of human and not
Human, and dimly all the human future: -what should persuade him
to speak? And what could his words change?
The mountain ahead of the world is not forming but fixed. But
the man’s words would be fixed also,
Part of that mountain, under equal compulsion; under the same
present compulsion in the iron consistency.
And nobody sees good or evil but out of a brain a hundred
centuries quieted, some desert
Prophet’s, a man humped like a camel, gone mad between the mud-
walled village and the mountain sepulchres.
V
Broad wagons before sunrise bring food into the city from the
open farms, and the people are fed.
They import and they consume reality. Before sunrise a hawk in
the desert made them their thoughts.
VI
Here is an anxious people, rank with suppressed
bloodthirstiness. Among the mild and unwarlike
Gautama needed but live greatly and be heard, Confucius needed
but live greatly and be heard:
This people has not outgrown blood-sacrifice, one must writhe on
the high cross to catch at their memories;
The price is known. I have quieted love; for love of the people
I would not do it. For power I would do it.
–But that stands against reason: what is power to a dead man,
dead under torture? –What is power to a man
Living, after the flesh is content? Reason is never a root,
neither of act nor desire.
For power living I would never do it; they’are not delightful to
touch, one wants to be separate. For power
After the nerves are put away underground, to lighten the
abstract unborn children toward peace…
A man might have paid anguish indeed. Except he had found the
standing sea-rock that even this last
Temptation breaks on; quieter than death but lovelier; peace
that quiets the desire even of praising it.
VII
Yet look: are they not pitiable? No: if they lived forever they
would be pitiable:
But a huge gift reserved quite overwhelms them at the end; they
are able then to be still and not cry.
And having touched a little of the beauty and seen a little of
the beauty of things, magically grow
Across the funeral fire or the hidden stench of burial
themselves into the beauty they admired,
Themselves into the God, themselves into the sacred steep
unconsciousness they used to mimic
Asleep between lamp’s death and dawn, while the last drunkard
stumbled homeward down the dark street.
They are not to be pitied but very fortunate; they need no
savior, salvation comes and takes them by force,
It gathers them into the great kingdoms of dust and stone, the
blown storms, the stream’s-end ocean.
With this advantage over their granite grave-marks, of having
realized the petulant human consciousness
Before, and then the greatness, the peace: drunk from both
pitchers: these to be pitied? These not fortunate
But while he lives let each man make his health in his mind, to
love the coast opposite humanity
And so be freed of love, laying it like bread on the waters; it
is worst turned inward, it is best shot farthest.
Love, the mad wine of good and evil, the saint’s and murderer’s,
the mote in the eye that makes its object
Shine the sun black; the trap in which it is better to catch the
inhuman God than the hunter’s own image.
To The Stone-Cutters
Stone-cutters fighting time with marble, you foredefeated
Challengers of oblivion
Eat cynical earnings, knowing rock splits, records fall down,
The square-limbed Roman letters
Scale in the thaws, wear in the rain. The poet as well
Builds his monument mockingly;
For man will be blotted out, the blithe earth die, the brave sun
Die blind and blacken to the heart:
Yet stones have stood for a thousand years, and pained thoughts found
The honey of peace in old poems.
Tor House
If you should look for this place after a handful
of lifetimes:
Perhaps of my planted forest a few
May stand yet, dark-leaved Australians or the coast
cypress, haggard
With storm-drift; but fire and the axe are devils.
Look for foundations of sea-worn granite, my fingers
had the art
To make stone love stone, you will find some remnant.
But if you should look in your idleness after ten
thousand years:
It is the granite knoll on the granite
And lava tongue in the midst of the bay, by the mouth
of the Carmel
River-valley, these four will remain
In the change of names. You will know it by the wild
sea-fragrance of wind
Though the ocean may have climbed or retired a little;
You will know it by the valley inland that our sun
and our moon were born from
Before the poles changed; and Orion in December
Evenings was strung in the throat of the valley like
a lamp-lighted bridge.
Come in the morning you will see white gulls
Weaving a dance over blue water, the wane of the moon
Their dance-companion, a ghost walking
By daylight, but wider and whiter than any bird in
the world.
My ghost you needn’t look for; it is probably
Here, but a dark one, deep in the granite, not
dancing on wind
With the mad wings and the day moon.
So Many Blood-Lakes
We have now won two world-wars, neither of which concerned us, we were
slipped in. We have levelled the powers
Of Europe, that were the powers of the world, into rubble and
dependence. We have won two wars and a third is comming.
This one–will not be so easy. We were at ease while the powers of the
world were split into factions: we’ve changed that.
We have enjoyed fine dreams; we have dreamed of unifying the world; we
are unifying it–against us.
Two wars, and they breed a third. Now gaurd the beaches, watch the
north, trust not the dawns. Probe every cloud.
Build power. Fortress America may yet for a long time stand, between the
east and the west, like Byzantium.
–As for me: laugh at me. I agree with you. It is a foolish business to
see the future and screech at it.
One should watch and not speak. And patriotism has run the world through
so many blood-lakes: and we always fall in.
Rock And Hawk
Here is a symbol in which
Many high tragic thoughts
Watch their own eyes.
This gray rock, standing tall
On the headland, where the seawind
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.
Fire On The Hills
The deer were bounding like blown leaves
Under the smoke in front the roaring wave of the brush-fire;
I thought of the smaller lives that were caught.
Beauty is not always lovely; the fire was beautiful, the terror
Of the deer was beautiful; and when I returned
Down the back slopes after the fire had gone by, an eagle
Was perched on the jag of a burnt pine,
Insolent and gorged, cloaked in the folded storms of his shoulders
He had come from far off for the good hunting
With fire for his beater to drive the game; the sky was merciless
Blue, and the hills merciless black,
The sombre-feathered great bird sleepily merciless between them.
I thought, painfully, but the whole mind,
The destruction that brings an eagle from heaven is better than men.
The Excesses of God
Is it not by his high superfluousness we know
Our God? For to be equal a need
Is natural, animal, mineral: but to fling
Rainbows over the rain
And beauty above the moon, and secret rainbows
On the domes of deep sea-shells,
And make the necessary embrace of breeding
Beautiful also as fire,
Not even the weeds to multiply without blossom
Nor the birds without music:
There is the great humaneness at the heart of things,
The extravagant kindness, the fountain
Humanity can understand, and would flow likewise
If power and desire were perch-mates.
Time Of Disturbance
The best is, in war or faction or ordinary vindictive
life, not to take sides.
Leave it for children, and the emotional rabble of the
streets, to back their horse or support a brawler.
But if you are forced into it: remember that good and
evil are as common as air, and like air shared
By the panting belligerents; the moral indignation that
hoarsens orators is mostly a fool.
Hold your nose and compromise; keep a cold mind. Fight,
if needs must; hate no one. Do as God does,
Or the tragic poets: they crush their man without hating
him, their Lear or Hitler, and often save without
love.
As for these quarrels, they are like the moon, recurrent
and fantastic. They have their beauty but night’s
is better.
It is better to be silent than make a noise. It is better
to strike dead than strike often. It is better not
to strike.
Shine, Perishing Republic
While this America settles in the mould of its vulgarity, heavily thickening
to empire
And protest, only a bubble in the molten mass, pops and sighs out, and the
mass hardens,
I sadly smiling remember that the flower fades to make fruit, the fruit rots
to make earth.
Out of the mother; and through the spring exultances, ripeness and deca-
dence; and home to the mother.
You making haste haste on decay: not blameworthy; life is good, be it stub-
bornly long or suddenly
A mortal splendor: meteors are not needed less than mountains:
shine, perishing republic.
But for my children, I would have them keep their distance from the thick-
ening center; corruption
Never has been compulsory, when the cities lie at the monster’s feet there
are left the mountains.
And boys, be in nothing so moderate as in love of man, a clever servant,
insufferable master.
There is the trap that catches noblest spirits, that caught–they say–
God, when he walked on earth.
Robinson Jeffers Documentary. (1967)
Night by Robinson Jeffers
Suicide’s Stone by Robinson Jeffers
*
p.s. Hey. ** Dominik, Hi!!! I’m so, so sorry about the election. I’ve been reading about it, and he really is so truly horrible. That people want and choose to live under a repressive dictator is something I’ll never understand. Do whatever it takes to be exactly yourself, obviously. Ugh, so sorry. Mm, no, I don’t know when the interview is being published. I’ll let you know. It’s for this magazine called Best that was apparently a very popular cutting edge music magazine in France in the 70s and 80s and is being reborn. Hm, I guess those eyeball hands could come in handy if you want to get a really good look up someone’s butt? But there goes my weird imagination again. Love pushing a button that gives Orban, Putin, Lukashenko, Trump, and 95% of the elected Republican politicians in the USA fatal heart attacks and offers condolences to their spouses and kids, G. ** David Ehrenstein, ‘The Shining’ one is up there for sure. ** _Black_Acrylic, RIP Jordan indeed. Sad news. Oh, that Trecartin/Fitch maze looks incredible! How could I not have found it? ‘Whether Line’, the video, is astoundingly great if you ever get the chance to see it. ** Misanthrope, I think I agree on both fronts. Ouch, dude, gloves, I mean … dude, what weren’t you thinking? They do say that about noses and ears. I think mine grew into relative honker when I was a teen though, and I don’ think it has become any bigger since. And my ears don’t seem especially elephantine, but then I avoid looking in mirrors whenever humanly possible. Tick tick … enjoy getting there. ** Thomas Moronic, Hey, T! How awesome to see you! That’s interesting: the wooziness. Maybe that’s the key to why you’re who you are? Probably not. I saw that McDowell’s playing here, cool. I’ll try to get a ticket too. I think he’s doing a collaboration with Puce Many while he’s here. Privately not publicly. I give you an extreme yes on getting Ethiopian food. I literally think about going back there every single day! It’s a fucking date, man! At the moment I’m working on the text for Gisele’s next piece, and it’s laborious but going well. And I’m fiddling with fiction, but the Gisele thing has pushed that aside for the next bit. And your writing? Can’t wait to see you! ** Thomas Kendall, Hi, Tom! Yes, I saw your email. I’ve been work-swamped, but I’m opening it today. Thank you, pal! ** Tosh Berman, Hi, Tosh. Yeah, I think you might have mentioned your maze anathema thing before. Interesting. While I don’t share it, I can feel you feeling it, and it’s, yeah, interesting. How odd are we? Thank you, kind sir. Ultra-best … what is it … Tuesday to you! ** Bill, I’m like you. I’ve been eyeballing ‘Nitram’. Sold-ish. No, sold. I’ll just prepare to fold my arms and tap my foot for the last part. Thanks ** Florian-Ayala Fauna, Hi, Florian! I’m so happy you dug it. The new Gisele piece is very early on, and her pieces tend to take a while to completely focus. It’s very sci-fi at the moment with a big retro laser show in part of it and a spaceship and a kind of fucked up ET-like thing. Could be good. Our piece ‘Crowd’ is going to play at Brooklyn Academy of Music in October. I don’ know if that’s accessible to you or not. Thanks for the link to your album. I’ve been swamped with work stuff, but I’ll take break and give it my first listen later today. Take care, my pal. ** Steve Erickson, Okay, sounds like that’s the diagnosis then. Ah, shit. Well, at least you know what you need to do for better or worse? I gave myself a little work break and listened to the first several tracks on your album and like them a ton and will continue. Kudos! ** Okay. Today you get a very old post made by a longlost denizen of this blog named Carsten Czarnecki about the poet Robinson Jeffers. It’s interesting (to me, at least) that when I was younger, he was super famous, definitely one of the most famous American poets. I read his stuff in school and everything, But it’s been years and years since I’ve even heard someone mention his name. Always interesting how that famous -> forgotten/unfashionable thing happens. Anyway, he seems quite worthy of attention, or at least Carsten made that seem to be the case, so why not take a little time today to investigate him, eh? See you tomorrow.
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