MOUNT KAILASH, Western Tibet, Asian Horizons Tibet Trip 2004, Photograph courtesy of Elliot Smith
HIGH PASS, Markha Valley, Ladakh, India, Asian Horizons Ladakh Trek 2005, Photograph courtesy of Andrew Head
SAMYE MONASTERY, Tibet, Asian Horizons Tibet Trip 2005, Photograph courtesy of Erin Ternes
THORONG LA, Nepal, Asian Horizons Annapurna Circuit Trek 2006, Photograph courtesy of Rachael Johnson
As I was taking down holiday decorations recently, it occured to me that I am certainly not the only person in northwest Arkansas who did not receive his “dream gift” this past Christmas. Therefore, I decided to conduct a “Customer Satisfaction Survey” at our local mall, in order to determine how many people share my annual frustration with Santa Claus.
While there was no pony among my presents (not to mention a Honda Ridgeline or an Asian girlfriend), I did find a package for me marked “From Santa” that contained a sweater with an oddly alarming pattern depicting what might be either smiling insects or snarling birds. Despite misgivings, I decided to wear this questionable garment during my researches, since it is, after all, the thought that counts, even if some ideas do not have enough energy behind them to light a ten-watt bulb.
Q: Are you generally happy with your Christmas presents?
A: Leave me alone.
Conclusion: Though the Christmas season is generally associated with good cheer, it might be necessary to expand the definition of “cheer” to include disappointment and resentment.
Q: Did you receive something that you really didn’t want?
A: You should be asking yourself that question. Where did you get that hideous sweater?
Conclusion: Sometimes it really is better to give than to receive.
Q: Did you fail to receive something that you really wanted?
A: Aren’t you that wine writer? Listen, Buddy, I know someone who works in a liquor store in Sapulpa, Oklahoma, and he says that you make up all that stuff about “hints of strawberry” and “nuances of oak.” He says that wine tastes like wine and that you don’t know what you’re talking about.
Conclusion: Not everything in Oklahoma is OK.
Q: Don’t you think that Santa Claus is actually nothing more than a puppet controlled by wealthy capitalists?
A: If you don’t get away from my pretzel stand right now, I’m going to call mall security
Conclusion: My skills as an interviewer clearly rival those that have brought me renown as a calligrapher and a singer.
Despite my understandable regret over not receiving a Christmas pony, I did enjoy the traditional satisfactions that attend being in the company of my sons, the youngest of whom approached me this morning and, still filled with the good will of the holiday season, asked, “Who gave you the cool sweater, Dad? A deranged beekeeper?”
Ho, Ho, Ho, indeed.
This posting first appeared as the frame for a wine review in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette on January 9, 2002. Readers will find more such articles in the electronic archives of the paper at www.arkansasonline.com. Actually, my penmanship is superb, albeit in an unconventional sense, and my singing has been compared with that of Caruso – Tony Caruso, a local automobile mechanic.
I recently received new evidence that I am woefully ignorant of modern fashions, this time in matters of hair care. A few days ago, my middle son walked past me, and I remarked that he smelled like fruit salad. He told me that I was detecting the rich bouquet of his new shampoo, something called, I believe, “Tropical Typhoon,” and which, he claimed, made him smell exactly like “summer in Arkansas.”
I immediately agreed, citing the coconut palms which line Fayetteville boulevards, the famous pineapple groves of Jonesboro, the extensive banana farms of El Dorado, and the world-renowned mango plantations of Pine Bluff.
He ignored my sarcasm and invited me to examine his shampoo collection, which is as strange as it is diverse. Should his hair become brittle, my son has a shampoo that contains eidelweiss, though he could not tell me how an alpine flower will make human hair more flexible. Should he discover that his hair is “lifeless,” this lucky lad has recourse to a marvelous concoction brimming with “restorative marigold and rose hips”; for “burned hair,” he has a shampoo blended with aloe vera, though I cannot recall the last time that my scalp caught fire. He also has shampoos that contain sassafras and chamomile, though I associate these substances with tea rather than with hair cleanser.
I decided that I needed to visit a local drug store in order to investigate contemporary trends in shampooing, and my first discovery was that not even shampoo is immune to “image appeal.” For example, spiritual seekers who aspire to enter nirvana can lather their scalps with a shampoo containing extract of lotus petals; for pastoralists, one shampoo contains “country apple” and another offers “clover blossom”; and for scuba enthusiasts, one exotic preparation advertised the presence of “sea vegetable extracts.”
But at the height of my cynical revelry, I was suddenly smitten, for I chanced upon a shampoo that contained the essential oils of “Australian wattle seed.” I am not sure what wattle seed is, but the bottle sported an attractive kangaroo logo, and my head suddenly filled with visions of a rugged life in the outback, where, with healthy, well-conditioned hair, I battled savage marsupials with my boomerang and subsisted on “tough guy” fare – bread, water, and, perhaps, wattle seeds.
I bought two bottles, just to be sure, and while washing my hair in the shower, I whistled ‘Waltzing Matilda.” My son soon arrived, and I asked him what he thought of my new shampoo’s fragrance. He laughed and asked, “What in the world is that!?”
In truth, the heady aroma of wattle seeds is not for everyone, but I felt very manly indeed while telling him about my new “Australian style.” He looked at me for a moment and said, “My Dad – Crocodile Dumb-dee.”
Actually, I don’t care what shampoo the little brute uses, as long as some of it rinses off his hair and goes into his eyes.
This posting first appeared as the frame for a wine column in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette on June 30, 1999. Readers can find many more such articles in the electronic archives of the newspaper at www.arkansasonline.com. I currently wash my hair with Dr. Bronner’s Mint-Scented Soap, and doing so makes me feel very manly, indeed.
For my three sons: The Moe, Larry, and Curly of my heart
In my estimation, one tradition invariably compromises the joy that attends the new year: the custom of making implausible resolutions.
This year, in an effort to forestall my annual failure to keep these promises and to shift the blame if I do not abide by them, I asked each of my sons to assist me by recommending a way that I could improve myself.
Predictably, each of these disrespectful ingrates immediately asked me if he had to restrict himself to helping amend just one of my character deficiencies, but in an act of generous forebearance, I ignored their provocations and graciously requested that they limit themselves to a single suggestion.
My oldest son told me to be more patient during the coming year.
First of all, I deny that I am ever impatient; I simply refuse to tolerate people whose retrograde opinions differ from my own, better-informed views. However, I vow to become a more patient person in the coming year, if it doesn’t take too long.
My middle son asked me to be kinder in the coming year, and my first impulse was to pummel him, since I am by nature a kind person, but I restrained myself, mostly because I didn’t have a cudgel nearby, and I might have bruised my fists on his insensitive hide.
Finally, my youngest son told me that I should strive to be completely honest in the coming year, and his was the most hurtful of the three suggestions, since it cast doubt on my scrupulously truthful character. His specific complaint was that I often write things about him in this column that are false, or at least slanted. I deny this allegation, and to refute it, I will now reveal two indisputable facts about this slanderous child: His favorite color is hot pink, and despite being eighteen years old, he still needs help tying his shoelaces.
In keeping with the optimistic spirit of the season, I have decided to make resolutions for the coming year that in some measure reflect the recommendations of my three sons. I pledge to be patient when my testing offspring compromise my peace of mind with their incessant challenges to reason and good sense; I will respond with unwarranted kindness to their baseless attacks on my character; and I will never resort to fabrication or creative embellishment when describing their many shortcomings. Honest.
This posting first appeared as the frame of a wine review in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette on December 30, 2002. Readers can find many more such articles in the paper’s electronic archives at www.arkansasonline.com. I truly am a very patient, very kind, and ever-truthful person, and skeptics should remember that, as everyone knows, it is against the law to tell lies on the Internet. By the way, my youngest son, whose nickname is “Pinky,” still needs help tying his shoelaces.
In honor of his twenty-first birthday, my son and I recently engaged in our first official “man-to-man” Frisbee golf game. Instead of simply reporting the result of this epic contest, I will describe and label three possible outcomes, provide the personal opinions of three individuals from respected professions, and then ask readers to guess the winner.
Outcome Number One: The wily and skillful father builds up an early lead on his youthful but thinly-talented son, and despite his best efforts, the young man collapses under the pressure of the game, and his venerable parent prevails. This would be called “The Happy Ending.”
Outcome Number Two: Despite falling behind early in the match, the incredibly lucky young man rallies to defeat his father by the slimmest of margins, mostly because the noble parent was twice distracted during the course of the game by having to intervene heroically in what newscasts later described as “major emergencies.” This would be called “The Tragic Ending.”
Outcome Number Three: The competition ends in a tie, probably owing to the merciful inclinations of the older but still more athletic contestant, and after the game, father and son affirm their status as co-champions by shaking hands. This would be called “The Hollywood Ending.”
In order to help readers correctly guess its outcome, I asked three people – a college coach, a public school administrator, and a politician – who they thought had won the contest. Doubtless the astute answers of these individuals will assist readers in determining their own.
College Coach: “I think that it is perfectly legitimate for student-athletes to major in Frisbee golf, as long as they minor in something with equal academic rigor, like volleyball, ping pong, or communications.”
Public School Administrator: “I think that technology is the answer to all our educational problems, including those related to games. By the way, what’s a Frisbee?”
Politician: “Frisbee golf is played in public parks, which are a socialist threat to the free enterprise system, as are public libraries, Medicare, and kindness. I don’t think that tax dollars should subsidize the frivolous activities of indolent bums, and I intend to cut all fun-related funding from my next budget proposal.”
Now that they have such a wealth of information, readers should have no trouble distinguishing winner from loser in this posting.
This article first appeared as the frame of a wine review in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette on March 27, 2002. Readers will find many more such articles in the electronic archives of the paper at www.arkansasonline.com. I am the reigning champion of Frisbee golf in our family, and the same is true in the case of bowling, miniature golf, and quoits. In fact, I have never been defeated in a game of quoits, whatever that might be.
For Dougal Tukten Neralich
Anyone who thinks that time travel is impossible should attend a high school prom, as I did recently, in response to my middle son’s suggestion that I be a chaperone for the last social function of his graduating class. On the big day he sported a tuxedo that made him look like a cross between James Bond and a Japanese gangster, just as my own prom picture, now mercifully lost, made me appear like a self-conscious Cary Grant trying to impersonate a cowboy.
Actually, his prom attire was identical to mine, and his male friends could have been my classmates, three decades ago. Their dates were clad in gowns and dresses that were somewhat more sophisticated than those I remember at my prom, but the corsages and the hairstyles were about the same.
The photographer present to “immortalize the memories” of these youthful couples was, I believe, the same man who took my prom picture, for he looked about two hundred years old, and his antique camera might have been used by Matthew Brady to record events at the Battle of Bull Run. As my son and his date stepped forward to have their picture taken, I had an unsettling moment, for despite my many disclaimers about being his father, the lad resembles me, and when the camera’s flash went off, I felt vaguely displaced.
Naturally, a few things about prom have changed since my high school years. One significant difference is that the actual dance has been displaced from the center of things by what students in my day would have regarded as peripheral matters. On prom day, my son and his friends devoted most of their energy to pre-dance celebrations and dinner rituals. Also, everyone at my prom showed up at about the same time, but today, many students arrive fashionably late, to add impact and a degree of drama to their entrances.
Perhaps the most distressing change I noted involved music. During my high school years, prom entertainment was provided by local bands who were usually inept but who did, nonetheless, understand how to play proper dance music. Today, prom music is generally provided by DJ’s whose musical selections, played at headache-inducing decibel levels, are not conducive to dancing; I noted, sadly, that most couples just sat together at tables, talking.
And then, all unexpected, time once more collapsed. The DJ announced the final song of the evening, and my heart swelled with remembered joy as the lovely music of “In the Still of the Night” wafted across the room. My son, wearing my prom jacket, wearing my smile, led his date onto the dance floor, while his father, standing twenty feet and thirty years distant, closed his eyes and began moving slowly in time to a rhythm that was for me so sweetly familiar and for my dear boy so sweetly new.
This posting first appeared as the frame for a wine review on May 26, 1999 in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Readers will find many more such reviews in the electronic archives of the paper at www.arkansasonline.com. I urge parents to spend as much time as possible with their children; the years really do fly by, you know.
The practice of organizing things into tidy categories is a typical and generally admirable habit of the human mind, and it is especially common for people to divide others into opposing personality types, such as conservative and liberal or classical and romantic. While there is some measure of truth in these distinctions, I also know that they tend to undervalue the subtlety and complexity of our humanity. Therefore, in this posting I am going to discuss one such division in a careful and serious way – morning people and night people.
I know that this subject might seem lightweight, but there are actually significant character differences between members of these two groups. I am a night person, and so I typically regard morning people as excessively cheerful twits, and in turn, my morning-loving friends consider me a grumpy hermit. However, this posting is not going to be an exercise in personal opinion or an advocacy for a point of view but rather a nonpartisan attempt at conciliation, and, speaking on behalf of my fellow night people, I will address morning people directly in an attempt to explain to them the ways in which our two groups diverge in their fundamental understandings of life.
Being children of the sun god Apollo, morning people think clearly; in accordance with their allegiance to Artemis, queen of the moon, night people imagine deeply. The subjects of Artemis sometimes get bad press from intellectual sun-worshippers, to whom they can appear distant, cold, and detached. To you, these are terms of rebuke, but for us they are simply descriptions of temporary emotional states that give us important perspectives on life.
You love the light; we prefer shadows. You thrive in society; we treasure solitude. The outer world delights you; the inner world holds us in fascinated thrall. We respect your discursive intelligence and your mastery of technology; we prefer to attend to our intuitions, and the skills and techniques we value are akin to those practiced by miners, who labor in darkness, searching for gems that they can bring to the surface and polish into something beautiful.
You constantly talk about improving the world, and we applaud your good intentions; you are always overflowing with new ideas and progressive schemes; but you do not seem to understand that too much light can blind the eye to important things and that there is a profound difference between having sight and having a vision.
You like noise and enjoy robust activity; we prefer quiet and the stillness that is conducive to contemplation; we tell you that we see best in darkness and hear most clearly in silence, and you dismiss us for being paradoxical, as if life at its deepest levels is not always being lived out amid contradictions that frustrate the logical mind.
To our amusement and dismay, you try to abolish night with artificial light, and sometimes your assault on darkness resembles the fear of children who keep a lamp burning beside them when they retire each evening. But unlike children, you do not value play; you fill up your schedules with busy-ness, and you live by the dictates of the clock. We cannot escape such things, of course, for it is not plausible to retreat to mountaintops or flee into the desert, and so we embrace the quiet privacy that night lprovides us. Watching the cosmic rhythms that guide the constellations across the sky, night people learn to synchronize thier lives in keeping with measures greater than those that govern the mortal world.
You do not understand the generosity of night; not everything that lives in or emerges from the shadows is fearful; sometimes these spirits are puckish, even charming, rather like mice scurrying in cupboards; many of our night imaginings are as poignant as lost children, and these orphaned parts of being ask for nothing more than to be acknowledged and welcomed home. After midnight, the bustling, task-driven egotist who rules our daytime hours slumbers, the dark gate within us swings open, and guests, invited and uninvited, arrive in a bustling throng, all of them bearing gifts.
I know that this sounds like bizarre poetry to you, and it is. You prefer straightforward prose, as if language were as utilitarian as a pair of shoes. But some parts of our nature require richer linguistic sustenance, and words resonate in unexpectedly meaningful ways when deeply mysterious things inspire them. Language is always in some sense a form of translation, and it would be wise for you to occasionally look inward and investigate the shadowy sources of your eloquent intelligence.
We salute your dauntless daytime spirit; you get many things accomplished while we are still abed; you abash us with your running torrent of ideas. But when we sit in quiet meditation, we are not doing nothing. Our vocation is not at all like your industrious and diligent notions of work. We play with images and fancies until something happens, but when we tell you about such things you declare us “foolish” or “idealistic.” We don’t pretend to understand these matters, but we are grateful for the lovely bounty they bestow upon us, and that is why we spend our nights vigilant, awaiting the arrival of the strange messengers. See the difference? In the morning, your spirits soar; in the dusk, our souls descend.
You love to sit in the rosy light of dawn amid floral gardens, with the grass aglitter with dew; we know this, because we catch sight of you before we close the shutters of our chambers and retire. We, too, love flowers, and we appreciate the freshness in the morning air as we return from our night journeys to sleep and dream. But in daylight, we prefer the shelter of quiet nooks and shady bowers; we delight in grottos, especially when they are adjacent to purling streams. Sitting beneath the shadowed canopy of a huge tree while reading a book – or reading airy nothing – is our idea of joy.
We share your erotic appreciation of the world, and we know that you love sensuous things – smells, tastes, textures, and sounds. But it is tender night, and not gaudy day, that is the traditional time for romance and magic. Shakespeare understood this, and so in A Mid-Summer Night’s Dream love works its spell in darkness – the only place in which such things are possible, far from the cynical and rationalistic light of day.
Actually, though we delight in good comedy, we prefer the shaded complexities of tragedy; sometimes we think that morning people do not always appreciate life’s inherent ambiguities; nor are we always sure that you value irony or that, in your uncomplicated though honest optimism, you fully comprehend that genuine wit is always laced with some measure of darkness. You probably find us skeptical, pessimistic, and critical; we agree, for that’s what we mean by “adult.”
We know that Thoreau admonished us to be awake to the morning star, but he wrote much of Walden in the evening, and besides, it is possible to stay up all night and still be alert enough to greet the dawn. Consider how many great books are filled with the spirit of night – Moby Dick, for instance, and even The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which, despite the deceptively cheerful tone of its final chapters, closes with shadows falling across American civilization.
In truth, day and night minister to different parts of our nature, but there is no denying that most of us delight in one more than the other. But rather than have such divisions provoke us into either inner or outer conflicts, I propose a truce, and as in all worthy peace treaties, both parties must agree to surrender something.
I therefore ask that all morning people concede that despite their fondest wishes not everyone on all occasions will have a nice day and that every smile can be complicated and improved with a hint of sorrow’s shadow at its edges. In turn, night people will admit that even the heaviest mood and most serious countenance could be lightened and brightened by a touch of morning sunshine. Thus may our differences be amicably resolved and our opposition transformed into mutually respectful complementarity. After all, the celestial body that we call the morning star has a second name – the evening star; it would seem strange to dispute which title suits it better.
This article was first published in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette on May 28, 2000. Anyone who wishes to read more of my columns and reviews should access the paper’s electronic archives at the following address:www.arkansasonline.com.
Two Rivers Winery
Chateau Deux Fleuves Vineyards
Mesa County
2005 Cabernet Sauvignon
Price: about $16
This impressive Colorado Cabernet Sauvignon has generous dark berry, cherry, and spice flavors, a notably soft texture, and a polished, lingering finish. It would go especially well with grilled meats or savory pasta dishes. If the wine is not available locally, you can order it from the winery at www.tworiverswinery.com/, provided you are a resident in one of the eighteen enlightened states that allows wines to be shipped to your door.
For Thomas Cochran
Like almost everything else in contemporary life, writers go out of style, and one formerly well-known American poet has all but disappeared from the literary landscape. After completing his formal education, Robinson Jeffers decided that he wanted to write; he eventually discovered his spiritual home in Point Sur, California, and for forty years he produced slender volumes of splendid poetry.
Sometimes a writer becomes unfashionable because he makes people unpleasantly aware of their cultural deficiencies, and perhaps that circumstance in some measure accounts for the current eclipse of Jeffers’ popularity. No one wants to have his glib certainties challenged, and the work of Robinson Jeffers is a decided provocation to contemporary sensibilities. It is always easier to dismiss a critic than it is to consider the ways in which his ideas might meaningfully improve the world.
Jeffers built Tor House and Hawk Tower on his property, stone by stone, in order to afford himself a clear perspective on the ocean – and on life. From this lofty citadel he wrote verses in an idiom as rugged as the Pacific coastline, and yet he was a deeply intuitive and profoundly sensitive man. Jeffers responded to nature in passionately eloquent ways, and he had a keen appreciation of the complexities of human character; in consequence, he wrote some of the most hauntingly lovely poems in the English language.
Jeffers had many temperamental affinities with Jack London. Both men despised the emotional promiscuity that sometimes informs American social life, and they were happiest when alone or in the company of family and close friends. Because they treasured privacy, in their works Jeffers and London defended the individual against the oppressive norms of mass society. Above all, these men shared a decidedly unsentimental view of nature’s inherent beauty and grandeur.
Like Thoreau, Jeffers was a keen observer of the natural world, and he was especially adept at placing local landscapes into wider poetic and philosophical contexts. Staring at the vast Pacific he could write, “Before there was any water there were tides of fire; both our tones flow from the older fountain.” His poetry thus affords readers a metaphorical glimpse into the primordial hurricane that gave birth to the cosmos.
But despite living amidst the immense gulfs of time and space, man has a place in Jeffers’ world, albeit a modest one. In “Boats in a Fog” Jeffers states, “It is a bitter earnestness that makes beauty . . . A sudden fog-drift muffled the ocean. A throbbing of engines moved in it . . . The flight of planets is nothing nobler; all the arts lose virtue against the essential reality of creatures going about their business among the equally earnest elements of nature.” Human beings might simply be “creatures” among many others, but in Jeffers’ poetry their everyday life is elevated into a mythic ritual.
Such experiences are not extraordinary, though they are frequently undervalued. Imagine a winter morning on an Arkansas lake. As the pre-dawn mist rises from the surface of the water, a bird suddenly cries out from the cloud-wracked woodlands. When the echoes of its call subside, the world is utterly silent, save for the gentle, barely audible lapping of waves upon the shore. This is the very sort of spiritually resonant moment that Jeffers captures and distills in his finest poetry. Solitude and quiet do not find much affirmation in our crowded and noisy world, but by having us recollect their worth, Jeffers imaginatively restores our sense of wonder at being alive.
In one of his most beautiful poems, Jeffers personifies night with such richly textured imagery that he could be mistaken for an Aryan nomad wandering in the steppes of central Asia, writing a Vedic love hymn to the goddess of darkness. From “Night”: “O passionately at peace you being secure will pardon the blasphemies of glowworms, the lamp in my tower, the fretfulness of cities, the cressets of planets, the pride of the stars.” Jeffers sounds, in fact, like a Chinese Taoist poet singing praises to Yin, the dark and depthless female principle that is the source of all creativity.
Walk abroad on a clear Arkansas night, far from the gaudy lights of city, and look heavenward. The same stars that delighted Jeffers wheel through our sky, bearing their lovely Greek names – Arcturus and Antares. The planets still wander through the constellations, as do we, and standing under her spangled dome, we are all the children of Mother Night. That is exactly the sort of quiet epiphany that illuminates the hearts of people who read the poetry of Robinson Jeffers.
Schooled in Greek tragedy, Jeffers did not have a particularly high regard for human beings or society. In fact, early in his career he wrote, “Humanity is the mold to break away from,” for he feared that a mass society would pressure its citizens to conform in ways that could extinguish creative individualism. Thus, his attacks on American monoculture are actually a defense of a national principle, and he was a tireless advocate of personal autonomy.
It is especially instructive in an election year to scan the lines of “Be Angry at the Sun” and discover, “That public men should publish falsehoods is nothing new . . . 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.” In 1924, at a time when America was enjoying an economic boom remarkably like the one that obtains today (2000), Jeffers wrote “Shine, Perishing Republic,” in which he lamented the fact that, long before the apotheosis of Hollywood and television, America had begun to settle “into the mold of its vulgarity.”
Jeffers’ tragic view of human experience is at variance with the therapeutic understandings currently in vogue. He wrote, “Be in nothing so moderate as in love of man, a clever servant, insufferable master.” He also asserted in “Soul’s Desert” that “Clearly it is time to become disillusioned, each person to enter his own soul’s desert and look for God – having seen man.” It is easy to characterize these notions as cynical, but since he was fluent in Classical languages, Jeffers would have construed the allegation as a compliment, for he knew that “cynic” derives from the Greek word for “canine” – the loyal dog that refuses to be cowed by popular opinion when it is at odds with truth.
In his steadfast realism, Jeffers knew that his artistic ambitions were doomed to failure. In an almost Shakespearean conceit, he comments in “To the Stone-Cutters” that people who create things are “foredefeated challengers of oblivion . . . the poet . . . builds his monument mockingly.” Perhaps art can temporarily arrest the flow of time by giving aesthetic form to transient things, but in Jeffers’ grim words, everything will finally “be blotted out.” This courageous acceptance extended to his own mortality, and in his poem “Bed by the Window,” with stoic conviction Jeffers states of his deathbed that “I often regard it, with neither dislike nor desire.”
William Butler Yeats once claimed that poets could sing “of what is past, or passing, or to come.” His study of Greek tragedy gave Jeffers an understanding of the past, his tower presented him with a perspective on the present, and his intuitive nature bestowed upon him the capacity to foresee the patterns of history being repeated in the future. However, he knew, as all wise prophets do, that his warnings would go unheeded. In fact, in his poem “Cassandra” he wrote, “does it matter, Cassandra, whether the people believe your bitter fountain? Truly men hate the truth.”
The poems of Robinson Jeffers reacquaint us with the bedrock constants of human life that abide beneath the shifting surface tides of cultural change. Since we live in a time characterized by remarkable technological achievements and broad economic prosperity, maybe we occasionally need such reminders. Perched high above the Pacific Ocean, Robinson Jeffers lived among and recorded the rhythms of sea and star, mountain and sun, humanity and history. Perhaps his poetry now suffers neglect, but his works are still in print, and they afford us all the opportunity to be astonished anew by the harsh and beautiful drama that is the world.
This article first appeared in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette on September 17, 2000. People who wish to read more of my editorials and reviews should access the newspaper’s electronic archives at www2.arkansasonline.com/
Thomas Cochran is a teacher, scholar, and author, whose two books – Roughnecks and Running the Dogs - deserve the widest possible audience.
Joseph Phelps Vineyards
St. Helena, Napa Valley
2007 Sauvignon Blanc
Price: about $32
This lovely Sauvignon Blanc has enticing floral and fruit aromas that lead to appealing lime, melon, and citrus flavors complicated by hints of vanilla and spice. a rich texture, and a lingering, creamy finish. While this luscious wine would certainly amplify the pleasures of any meal featuring salmon, it possesses more than enough of the inherently crisp, palate-cleansing character traditionally found in Sauvignon Blanc to go equally well with seasoned poultry dishes.
Joseph Phelps Vineyards
Napa Valley
2005 Insignia
Price: about $200
A masterful blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Petite Verdot from estate-owned vineyards in five agricultural districts, Joseph Phelps Vineyards 2005 Insignia has immensely attractive aromas of cherry, spice, anise, and vanilla-oak that lead to layered complexities of flavor, including black cherry, plum, and currant that are accompanied by perfectly integrated notes of spice and oak. All of these well-balanced riches are supported by firm tannins and close in an extended finish. For a wine with such an impressive structure, Joseph Phelps 2005 Insignia is surprisingly accessible, though it would certainly benefit from a decade or more of cellaring.
