Letter from President-Elect

President:
Peter Quigley

Executive Director:
Ronald Olowin

Treasurer:
Robert Kafka

Advisory Board:
Robert Brophy;
Maeve Jeffers;

Ex Officio:
Jim Baird,
Past President

John Varady,
Tor House Foundation

George Hart,
California State University, Long Beach

RJA Bulletin

Peter Quigley, RJA President, 2006-2008

President's Message

This installment of the RJA Bulletin has us looking back at the 12^th Annual RJA Conference held in February at the Big Sur Environmental Institute on the stunning Brazil Ranch. We were all pleased to have Scott Slovic join us; he delivered a wonderful keynote focusing on place and the materials of location. We were all talking about the texture, qualities, and politics of stone for days. Please see the web site for pictures from the conference. The site documenting this last conference is still being edited, but there are some good shots of the conference.

This conference confirmed for many of us the fact that Jeffers has been a faithful thinking companion for all seasons. His work has been important to many of us through our personal growth as well as our professional and political lives. The best poetry it seems acts like a companion teaching us how to see beauty (in Jeffers’s case a rough beauty) but also teaches us how to win over and over again the independence of spirit and of thought which in each passing year proves more precious to maintain. Emerson of course linked the two, perception and independence, by stating that “Our hunting for the picturesque is inseparable from our protest against a false society.” And so it is with Jeffers who insisted on a strong link between learning how to see beauty from his inhumanist point of view and cultivating an independence that is rare. In fact (it is never possible to quote Emerson without Thoreau as well), Thoreau put it this way: “I had walked over those . . . fields so many Augusts and never . . . recognized these purple companions . . . Beauty and true wealth are always thus cheap and despised. Heaven might be defined as the place which men avoid.” Jeffers carved out a hard beauty and a lonely shore for us to walk. In poems such as “We Are Those People” and in sentiments expressed such as “their beauty has more meaning,” Jeffers risked much. The rewards for the reader are high: “love your eyes that can see.”

With Big Sur behind us, planning for the next conference moves along swiftly. At this moment, W. S. Merwin has agreed to be our keynote speaker! The location for the conference will be Hawaii. Hawaii ends up being about the same flight distance from California as an East Coast destination. I am lucky to have some help from colleagues at the University of Hawaii to plan the conference. Frank Stewart and John Cusick have already been helpful. Frank, in fact, knows Merwin and has been the key to securing his participation with us. Eric Shaffer, a poet from Maui, will also be assisting. David Rothman was here in March and Ron Olowin will be here (Hawaii) in a few days (early May) to help me with the venue.

Jeffers looked out to the western watery horizon as he thought about the world and its troubled inhabitants. Hawaii will give us a chance to enjoy Jeffers while surrounded by the Pacific Ocean he loved so well. In addition, we will talk about Jeffers within the graceful cultural context of a native people who stack stone and love the sea and the earth (aina). You can’t be anywhere in Hawaii without also being makai (oriented towards the sea) and mauka (towards the mountains). I have recently been in contact with scholars (such as Neal Bowers) who have written about Jeffers and Merwin. Hopefully we will see them at the conference as well.

My next message to you will be about the precise location for the conference and accommodations. I am going to see if I can find any dorm packages, especially for our student participants. Keep checking www.jeffers.org for updates on these details.

All best wishes.