Poet Robinson Jeffers to be topic at OLLI meeting – Chico Enterprise-Record

Osher Lifelong Learning Institute will host a meeting, 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. March 8 at the Chico Masonic Family Center, 1110 W. East Ave. Socializing precedes the program at noon.

OLLI is Chico State Universitys learning-in-retirement program. The educational program is centered on classes developed and taught by volunteers who share their time and knowledge. There are no grades or tests.

For more, call 898-6679 or visit http://tinyurl.com/jcs4no9.

Chico >> James Karman has studied literature, religion and humanities extensively. In fact, he is a professor emeritus at Chico State University who was coordinator of the Humanities Program there.

Years ago, one poet caught his attention and his respect. Karman will discuss the life of Robinson Jeffers during the general meeting March 8 of Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, Chico States learning-in-retirement program.

Jeffers became Karmans topic for his Ph.D. dissertation at Syracuse University in the 1970s.

Robinson Jeffers was the perfect candidate for my research, he said of the poet who lived from 1887 to 1962. His poetry is deeply spiritual but had a vision of life as essentially religious. His orientation might be called pantheism: that God is in everything.

Karman has written nine books about the poet, including five published by Stanford University Press. The latest, Robinson Jeffers: Poet and Prophet, was published in August.

Jeffers did much more than write poetry, and Karman explained the prophet in the books title.

Jeffers had a wide open vision of life. He could see far into the past and future, as well as very precisely into the present moment. Profits are described that way. A profit looks at the present moment, can see distant past, how we got to where we are and see future implications of present behavior.

Karman is considered a world renowned expert on Jeffers.

In the 1920s and 30s, Jeffers was very aware of what humans are doing to themselves and to planet Earth. Specifically, he was worried about over-population and pollution, about the exploitation of resources.

He was also concerned with human cruelty, and condemned war. When World II was coming which he predicted and condemned before, during and after people reacted to him with anger. He showed in no uncertain terms what people were doing to themselves.

Karman said Jeffers was ahead of his time. He is considered one of the founders of the modern environmental movement. He was raised by parents who were highly educated and he was given an education in Europe. By the time he was a teenager, he was in complete command of French, German, English, Greek and Latin.

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As an adult, Jeffers moved to Los Angeles. He fell in love with a married woman and after being publicly disgraced about it, they married in 1913 and moved to Carmel.

The coastal area was barely developed then. They built a stone house and lived in the wilderness, which forced him to reconsider everything he brought with him. Studies of science, literature and language, combined with the raw, wild natural world.

At the time, Jeffers was a maverick. He brought all his own wisdom to literature and languages, augmented by his research in the medical sciences.

In all his years of teaching at Chico State 1977 to 2003 Karman said he never taught a class about the poet. Never in my entire career, he said. I always taught about world religions, western literature. He is the object of my scholarship and research.

Karman also has a perspective about Jeffers. There was a time when he hit his stride. In 1932, he was on the cover of Time magazine. But once he condemned the U.S. for wartime behavior and humanity for the environment, people turned against him.

He said Jeffers is really very fascinating and timely. He is a poet for our own times. The half of the American population today who does not believe in climate change, who are trying to dismantle the Environmental Protection Agency, wouldnt like Jeffers. Anybody who is for peace on Earth and protecting the environment, will love Jeffers. It is a definite divide.

Last year, Karman was awarded the Robinson Jeffers Associations Lawrence Clark Powell Award for Distinguished Scholarship in Carmel. Last year he also won the Oscar Lewis Award for Western History. Karman and Stanford University Press were honored last year at the 85th annual California Book Awards for Karmans book, The Collected Letters of Robinson Jeffers.

Contact reporter Mary Nugent at 896-7764.

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Poet Robinson Jeffers to be topic at OLLI meeting - Chico Enterprise-Record