W8 Reading Part B Jeffers

Reading Notes for writings by Robinson Jeffers, pgs 407-413


Continent’sEnd

• A cold wet California winter, with those new poppies, that’s a familiar sight.
• Granite and spray, wonder what area he’s in. 
• From the locations, it sounds like he’s moved around various California national parks.
• A travel to meet mother, is it a person or symbolism?
• The song starts to pick up pace near the end, but also get more solemn. 

To the Stone Cutters

• Are stone cutters miners? 
• It sounds like these people work hard for little in return. 
• He gets stronger and stronger and no one knows him?
• It’s a bit confusing of a poem.

Tor House

• Australians? Coast cypress?
• Is he looking for the remnants of human presence on the stone, or the presence of the nature removing them?
• Lava tongue near Carmel, I’m a bit more confused, I thought those would be a bit further. 
• White morning gulls and they are dancing, very common scene for being near the ocean.

Hurt Hawks

• A two part song or poem? Interesting
• The part one feels like he is talking both about a hawk who has met the end of the roads but also seems to talk about a weary traveler, one who is lost but traveling on.
• Part two, it’s cute he talks about helping a hurt hawk. The hawk never would of made it without help from someone since a leg is critical, and also it let him learn about the gracefulness and strength of the hawk. 

Rock and Hawk

• This poem makes me think about traveling along the grassy or rocky areas of California and just seeing all of the falcons and hawks perched or flying looking for their next adventure or meal. 
• The falcon is strong and stoic feeling from the poem. 

The Purse-Seine

• The dark of the moon is a strong phrase, usually we hear the opposite, with the moonlight providing the light, but this gives a different feeling. 
• All the fishers in Monterey and more... Cannary Row. 
• The hauling of fish is great for us, but scary for the fish, and he wants us to know that, knowing the fish are approaching their end 
• He also makes the fish gleam, despite making the fisherman’s work in the “dark”
• He relates the fish to himself, both helpless and trapped, he is trapped in his work. 

Carmel Point

• Defaced with a crop of suburban houses (413) wow, this is a strong statement, he really dislikes the changes that happened to Carmel. 
• The old Carmel was mostly free grassland and farmland, very rural and untamed.
• This poem was like a call out to urbanization, telling us perhaps we need to relax with it a bit?