
There was often some degree of awe or reverence ascribed to these occasions, but very little mentioned about the man himself. Noted authors and bohemian celebrities were always dropping in on Jeffers when passing through Carmel.


I knew little about the man but kept bumping into him in other writers’ work. I had first read the poem while browsing a Jeffers anthology in a bookstore, a volume entitled The Wild God of the World. Many years later, he had indeed died in the room, thereby fulfilling its destiny. Robinson Jeffers, 1937 By Carl Van Vechten, via Wikimedia CommonsA chill rippled across my skin as I realized that we were standing in that very room and the bed before me was the subject of the poem - the death-bed in “The Bed by the Window.” Robinson Jeffers had written the poem as a young man shortly after building the house.
