Robinson Jeffers, "The Beauty of Things"

This year, the Poetry Center received a grant from the NEA's Big Read program to work with the poetry of Robinson Jeffers. As a result, among the options for our residencies we were asked to devise a two-week lesson plan devoted to one of Jeffers' poems, as well as the work of another poet sympathetic to Jeffers' world view.

I first encountered Jeffers' poems while living in Northern California. Part of his obsession involves the Big Sur coastline, where he built his home, Tor House, which remains standing today. It's easy to sympathize with his love of that part of the country, which is truly breathtaking; but his poetry is far from easy, both stylistically as well as philosophically. (I have pulled the Random House volume of his Selected Poetry off my shelf many times before, attempting to find something suitable to use in my public school classrooms, but I always got stymied by the density and verbosity of his writing.)

However, faced with having to teach a Jeffers poem, I once again dove deep into his oeuvre, focusing on the shorter works. In the end, I decided on "The Beauty of Things," both for its adherence to his concerns over what he called man's unhumanity as well as its central evocation of what comprises "the sole business of poetry."

I'll have the follow-up lesson and poems next week. In the meanwhile, please read these poems by students at Shields and Solomon Elementary.