And here are eleven lines called The Place for No Story, because the coast here, its pure and simple grandeur, seemed to be too beautiful to be the scene of any narrative poem of mine; and I’ve kept the promise I made to it.

So Jeffers said on his cross-country tour in 1941.

The notion that a single place is more beautiful than any other is too idolatrous for my liking, but that aside, there is the matter of what Robinson Jeffers actually did in contrast to what he claimed to have done. Sovranes Creek (as he sometimes spelled Soberanes Creek) entered his narratives more than once, and once as a foundational scene early in his magnum opus, The Women At Point Sur. At the time of the writing of The Place for No Story, Jeffers may very well have been working on Thurso’s Landing, a poem that also includes Sovranes Creek at a key point in its narrative.

The text and a recording of The Place for No Story has been posted by the Poetry Foundation.

The Place for No Story has not been included in any anthologies other than Jeffers-exclusive collections.