ロビンソン・ジェファーズ (1887-1962) はアメリカの天才的な詩人と言われ、環境保護主義者として知られている。作品はカリフォルニアの海岸の美しさを唱えながら、社会の発展に対して批判的な立場をよく取る。

Robinson Jeffers (1887-1962)

Jeffers brought enormous learning in literature, religion, philosophy, languages, myth, and sciences to his poetry. One of his favorite themes was the intense, rugged beauty of the landscape in opposition to the degraded and introverted condition of modern man. Strongly influenced by Nietzsche’s concepts of individualism, Jeffers believed that human beings had developed an insanely self-centered view of the world, and felt passionately that we must learn to have greater respect for the rest of creation. (From the Academy of American Poets’ biography of Jeffers)

Carmel Point   by Robinson Jeffers

The extraordinary patience of things! 
This beautiful place defaced with a crop of suburban 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.

In honor of National Poetry Month 2012

アメリカの現代詩の父ワルト・ホイットマン（1819-1892）の眼鏡
The glasses of Walt Whitman (1819-1892), father of modern American poetry 

Back in style?

Courtesy of poetsorg.

In honor of National Poetry Month 2012

アメリカの現代詩の母、エミリー・ディキンソンの『植物標本集』より
ディキンソンは生前は全く無名であったが、1700篇以上残した作品はアメリカの現代詩の出発点とされている。詩を封筒や屑紙に書くことが毎日の戯れだったが、その他に自分の庭に植物を育つことが熱心だった。『植物標本集』にそれぞれの植物を集めたので、十九世紀のアメリカの植物を研究するために、貴重な資料になっている。

From Emily Dickinson: Herbarium
In honor of National Poetry Month 2012

Courtesy Boston Public Library and poetsorg

ジャック・ケルアックの「アメリカン・ハイク」
Jack Kerouac reads “American Haiku”