North of Carmel: Jeffers, Bringhurst, and the Ecological View

Abstract

This article proposes that the works of the modern American poet Robinson Jeffers and those of the contemporary Canadian poet Robert Bringhurst are linked by an ecological ethos. Although specific instances of Jeffers’s influence occur here and there in Canadian literary history, the connection between Jeffers and Bringhurst is more substantial, if not immediately obvious. It consists in an aesthetic and intellectual affinity—in a shared poetic terrain that is a conceptual equivalent of the western North American geography they have in common. (Jeffers was a Californian poet; Bringhurst is often associated with the Pacific Northwest.) The poets are comparably concerned with wilderness, which in their works is not always remote or uninhabited but rather characterized by the peripheral place of humanity. In attending to parallels between the authors’ works, the article suggests that reading across the border between Canada and the United States brings into view significant literary connections.