As a city that hosted such masters of the novel as Faulkner and Fitzgerald, provided sanctuary to European titans like Mann and Brecht, and produced its own homegrown stars like Raymond Chandler and Bret Easton Ellis, Los Angeles is no stranger to literary greatness. But the poet who -- according to at least one authority -- is among the greatest to emerge from the city too infrequently enters into discussions of L.A.'s literary legacy.
Next week, an afternoon festival at USC's Doheny Memorial Library celebrates the work and life of California poet Robinson Jeffers and sheds lights on Jeffers' eleven formative years in Los Angeles. Although the poet and environmentalist's strongest geographic associations may rest with the wave-pounded Central California coast, Southern California is a region that looms large in Jeffers' life story.