Home > Poems & Poets > Failed Tribute to the Stonemason of Tor House, Robinson Jeffers

POEM
RELATED CONTENT Discover this poem's context and related poetry.

Failed Tribute to the Stonemason of Tor House, Robinson Jeffers

By James Tate b. 1943 James Tate

We traveled down to see your house,

Tor House, Hawk Tower, in Carmel,

California. It was not quite what

I thought it would be: I wanted it

to be on a hill, with a view of the ocean

unobstructed by other dwellings.

Fifty years ago I know you had

a clean walk to the sea, hopping

from boulder to boulder, the various

seafowl rightly impressed with

your lean, stern face. But today

with our cameras cocked we had to

sneak and crawl through trimmed lawns

to even verify the identity of

your strange carbuncular creation,

now rented to trillionaire non-

literary folk from Pasadena.

Edged in on all sides by trilevel

pasteboard phantasms, it took

a pair of good glasses to barely see

some newlyweds feed popcorn

to an albatross. Man is

a puny thing, divorced,

whether he knows it or not, and

pays his monthly alimony,

his child-support. Year after year

you strolled down to this exceptionally

violent shore and chose your boulder;

the arms grew as the house grew

as the mind grew to exist outside

of time, beyond the dalliance

of your fellows. Today I hate

Carmel: I seek libation in the Tiki

Bar: naked native ladies are painted

in iridescent orange on velvet cloth:

the whole town loves art.

And I donate this Singapore Sling

to the memory of it, and join

the stream of idlers simmering outside.

Much as hawks circled your head

when you cut stone all afternoon,

kids with funny hats on motorscooters

keep circling the block.

Jeffers, ...

Source: Selected Poems (1991)

Biography

James Tate’s poems have been described as tragic, comic, absurdist, nihilistic, hopeful, haunting, lonely, and surreal. His many poetry collections include The Ghost Soldiers (2008); Worshipful Company of Fletchers (1994), which won the National Book Award; Selected Poems (1991), which won the Pulitzer Prize and the William Carlos Williams Award; Distance from Loved Ones (1990); Constant Defender (1983); Viper Jazz (1976); and . . .

Continue reading this biography