AN
AFTERNOON AT THE BEACHON
EXHIBIT
owers
had a lifelong love affair with the beach. It began in childhood, when he
would vacation with his family on the coast of North Carolina, and it gave
rise to one of his juvenile poems, “My Desire,” in which the 13-year-old
poet expresses his wish to live by the sea.Bowers's
wish came true soon after he began teaching at the University of California,
Santa Barbara. He bought a modest, one-bedroom house on Miramar Beach in
Montecito and rented it to friends or acquaintances during the summers while
he traveled. The living room faced south toward the ocean, which, at high
tide, would wash beneath his deck. Bowers had the cadence of the waves in
his ears day and night, and the view from his house figured prominently
in some of his finest short poems.
MS
of "My Desire"
William
Edgar Bower, Sr., Edgar Bowers, Eleanor Bowers
Bowers's
house on Miramar Beach, 1961
James
Davis
Erika
Fields in the living room of Bowers's house on Miramar Beach
MS
of "An Afternoon at the Beach"
View
of Miramar Beach from the deck
Deck
of beach house
Card
from Bowers to Esther "Andy" Anderson"
Grace
Bowers, Nancy Isaacson, James Davis
Untitled
MS "An Elegy: December, 1970"
THE
POEMS
"An
Afternoon at the Beach"
"An
Elegy: December, 1970"
"The
Beach"