MCDONALD: Everyone takes a turn in the chair. ROBERTS: If you'd like to sit in the chair he sat in while he wrote his poetry. People on the tour can go inside and sit at Jeffers' desk. MCDONALD: Jeffers hauled stones up from the beach to build the tower. ROBERTS: Hawk Tower took five years to build, 1920 to 1925. MCDONALD: On the same property next to Tor House, Jeffers built what he called Hawk Tower for his wife, Una. And it was during this time that, as he later wrote, his fingers learned the art of making stone, love stone. ROBERTS: And Jeffers - because he felt the construction was going too slow - paid himself $4 a day to help build the house. MCDONALD: Jeffers hired a builder to construct the original house out of stone, in 1916. And the last line of the poem is: How dear you will be to me when I too grow old, old comrade. And he comes and he pours wine and white milk and honey on it, to consecrate it. ROBERTS: And he has a poem called 'To the Rock That Will Be The Cornerstone Of The House,' which he wrote before he built the house. MCDONALD: He stands at the side of the large boulder with a group of six people who listen raptly while the ocean roars below. Tor House is named for a rock outcropping, which the Irish call a Tor. He infuses his tours with Jeffers' poems, most recited from memory. MCDONALD: Seventy-six-year-old Ruchowitz Roberts has been leading people through Jeffers' home for about 15 years. And then, once I came here and lived in the area, I began to read Jeffers and of course, that's what drew me to Tor House. And I asked him what was the occasion, and he said it was the death of Robinson Jeffers. Ruchowitz Roberts was teaching in the Midwest.ĮLLIOT RUCHOWITZ ROBERTS: And one of my colleagues got drunker earlier than usual that day. RACHEL MCDONALD, BYLINE: Elliot Ruchowitz Roberts grew up on the East Coast, and didn't hear about Robinson Jeffers until about the time the poet died. The house sits on a cliff, overlooking the Pacific Ocean.Īs part of our summer Nickel Tour series, Rachael McDonald, of member station KLCC, introduces us to another poet who gives tours of Tor House. The late poet Robinson Jeffers built Tor House in Carmel, Calif., in the early 20th century.

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