William Everson also known as Brother Antoninus, was an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 poet

Poet

A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...

 of the San Francisco Renaissance

San Francisco Renaissance

The term San Francisco Renaissance is used as a global designation for a range of poetic activity centered on San Francisco and which brought it to prominence as a hub of the American poetic avant-garde. However, others The term San Francisco Renaissance is used as a global designation for a range...

 and was also a literary critic and small press

Small press

Small press is a term often used to describe publishers with annual sales below a certain level. Commonly, in the United States, this is set at $50 million, after returns and discounts...

 printer.

Beginnings

Everson was born in Sacramento, California

Sacramento, California

Sacramento is the capital city of the U.S. state of California and the county seat of Sacramento County. It is located at the confluence of the Sacramento River and the American River in the northern portion of California's expansive Central Valley. With a population of 466,488 at the 2010 census,...

. His Christian Scientist parents, both of whom were printers, raised him on a farm outside the small fruit-growing town of Selma

Selma, California

Selma is a city in Fresno County, California. The population was 23,219 at the 2010 census, up from 19,240 at the 2000 census. Selma is located southeast of Fresno, at an elevation of 308 feet .-Geography:...

, which is south of Fresno

Fresno, California

Fresno is a city in central California, United States, the county seat of Fresno County. As of the 2010 census, the city's population was 510,365, making it the fifth largest city in California, the largest inland city in California, and the 34th largest in the nation...

 in California

California

California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

's San Joaquin Valley

San Joaquin Valley

The San Joaquin Valley is the area of the Central Valley of California that lies south of the Sacramento – San Joaquin River Delta in Stockton...

. He played football at Selma High School and attended Fresno State College (later California State University, Fresno

California State University, Fresno

California State University, Fresno, often referred to as Fresno State University and synonymously known in athletics as Fresno State , is one of the leading campuses of the California State University system, located at the northeast edge of Fresno, California, USA.The campus sits at the foot of...

).

As a poet, thinker and man

Everson was an influential member of the San Francisco Renaissance

San Francisco Renaissance

The term San Francisco Renaissance is used as a global designation for a range of poetic activity centered on San Francisco and which brought it to prominence as a hub of the American poetic avant-garde. However, others The term San Francisco Renaissance is used as a global designation for a range...

 in poetry and worked closely with Kenneth Rexroth

Kenneth Rexroth

Kenneth Rexroth was an American poet, translator and critical essayist. He is regarded as a central figure in the San Francisco Renaissance, and paved the groundwork for the movement...

 during this period of his life. Throughout his life, Everson was a devotee of the work and lifestyle of poet Robinson Jeffers

Robinson Jeffers

John Robinson Jeffers was an American poet, known for his work about the central California coast. Most of Jeffers' poetry was written in classic narrative and epic form, but today he is also known for his short verse, and considered an icon of the environmental movement.-Life:Jeffers was born in...

. Much of his work as a critic was done on Jeffers's poetry.

Everson registered as an anarchist and a pacifist with his draft board, in compliance with the 1940 draft bill. In 1943, he was sent to a Civilian Public Service

Civilian Public Service

The Civilian Public Service provided conscientious objectors in the United States an alternative to military service during World War II...

 (CPS) work camp for conscientious objectors in Oregon

Oregon

Oregon is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It is located on the Pacific coast, with Washington to the north, California to the south, Nevada on the southeast and Idaho to the east. The Columbia and Snake rivers delineate much of Oregon's northern and eastern...

. In Camp Angel

Camp Angel

Camp Angel was Civilian Public Service camp number 56, one of many camps across the United States where conscientious objectors were given unpaid jobs of "national importance" as a substitute for World War II military service....

 at Waldport, Oregon

Waldport, Oregon

Waldport is a city in Lincoln County, Oregon, United States. The population was 2,050 at the 2000 census. The city is located on the Alsea River and Alsea Bay, south of Newport and north of Yachats.-Geography:...

, with other poets, artists and actors such as Kemper Nomland

Kemper Nomland

Kemper Nomland Jr. was a modernist architect in Los Angeles, California and part of a father-son architectural team with his father Kemper Nomland. He was also a painter and printer of poetry and arts publications....

, William Eshelman

William Robert Eshelman

William Robert Eshelman was an American pacifist, editor and librarian. He was active in causes such as preventing censorship, ending racial segregation and stopping the Vietnam war, while gaining distinction in his professional career.-Career:...

, Kermit Sheets

Kermit Sheets

Louis Kermit Sheets was an actor, director, playwright and an artistic partner with poet James Broughton.-World War II:...

, Glen Coffield

Glen Coffield

Glen Coffield was an American poet and conscientious objector. He was born in Prescott, Arizona, and received a B.S. degree in education from Central Missouri State Teachers College in 1940...

, George Woodcock

George Woodcock

George Woodcock was a Canadian writer of political biography and history, an anarchist thinker, an essayist and literary critic. He was also a poet, and published several volumes of travel writing. He founded in 1959 the journal Canadian Literature, the first academic journal specifically...

 and Kenneth Patchen

Kenneth Patchen

Kenneth Patchen was an American poet and novelist. Though he denied any direct connection, Patchen's work and ideas regarding the role of artists paralleled those of the Dadaists, the Beats, and Surrealists...

, he founded a fine-arts program in which the CPS men staged plays and poetry-readings and learned the craft of fine printing. During his time as a conscientious objector, Everson completed The Residual Years, a volume of poems that launched him to national fame.

Everson joined the Catholic Church in 1948 and soon became involved with the Catholic Worker Movement

Catholic Worker Movement

The Catholic Worker Movement is a collection of autonomous communities of Catholics and their associates founded by Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin in 1933. Its aim is to "live in accordance with the justice and charity of Jesus Christ." One of its guiding principles is hospitality towards those on...

 in Oakland, California

Oakland, California

Oakland is a major West Coast port city on San Francisco Bay in the U.S. state of California. It is the eighth-largest city in the state with a 2010 population of 390,724...

. He took the name "Brother Antoninus" when he joined the Dominican Order

Dominican Order

The Order of Preachers , after the 15th century more commonly known as the Dominican Order or Dominicans, is a Catholic religious order founded by Saint Dominic and approved by Pope Honorius III on 22 December 1216 in France...

 in 1951 in Oakland. A colorful literary and counterculture figure, he was subsequently nicknamed the "Beat Friar." He left the Dominicans in 1969 to embrace a growing sexual awakening, and married a woman many years his junior. The 1974 poem Man-Fate explores this transformation. Everson was stricken by Parkinson's Disease

Parkinson's disease

Parkinson's disease is a degenerative disorder of the central nervous system...

 in 1972, and its effects on him became a powerful element in his public readings.

Everson spent most of his years living near the central California coast a few miles north of Santa Cruz

Santa Cruz, California

Santa Cruz is the county seat and largest city of Santa Cruz County, California in the US. As of the 2010 U.S. Census, Santa Cruz had a total population of 59,946...

 in a cabin he dubbed "Kingfisher Flat". He was poet-in-residence at the University of California, Santa Cruz

University of California, Santa Cruz

The University of California, Santa Cruz, also known as UC Santa Cruz or UCSC, is a public, collegiate university; one of ten campuses in the University of California...

 during the 1970s and 1980s. There he founded the Lime Kiln Press, a small press

Small press

Small press is a term often used to describe publishers with annual sales below a certain level. Commonly, in the United States, this is set at $50 million, after returns and discounts...

 through which he printed highly sought-after fine-art editions of his own poetry, as well as of the works of other poets, including Robinson Jeffers

Robinson Jeffers

John Robinson Jeffers was an American poet, known for his work about the central California coast. Most of Jeffers' poetry was written in classic narrative and epic form, but today he is also known for his short verse, and considered an icon of the environmental movement.-Life:Jeffers was born in...

 and Walt Whitman

Walt Whitman

Walter "Walt" Whitman was an American poet, essayist and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse...

. His papers are archived at the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library

William Andrews Clark Memorial Library

The William Andrews Clark Memorial Library , one of twelve official libraries at the University of California, Los Angeles, is one of the most comprehensive rare books and manuscripts libraries in the United States, with particular strengths in English literature and history , Oscar Wilde, and fine...

 at UCLA and The Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley.

Black Sparrow Press recently released a three-volume series of the collected poems of Everson, the last volume of which was published in 2000.

Poetry

• These Are the Ravens (1935). San Leandro, CA: Greater Western Publishing.
• San Joaquin (1939). Los Angeles: The Ward Ritchie Press.
• War Elegies (1944). Waldport, Oregon: Untide Press
  Untide Press
  The Untide Press, founded in 1943, attempted to bring poetry to the public in an inexpensive but attractive format.It was founded by writer William Everson, architect and printer Kemper Nomland, actor Kermit Sheets and editor / librarian William Eshelman, in a camp of conscientious objectors in...
  
  .
• The Residual Years (1948). New York: New Directions.
• A Privacy of Speech (1949). Berkeley: The Equinox Press.
• The Crooked Lines of God (1959). Detroit: University of Detroit Press.
• The Hazards of Holiness (1962). Garden City, NY: Doubleday.
• The Poet is Dead: a Memorial for Robinson Jeffers (1964). San Francisco: Auerhahn Press.
• The Blowing of the Seed (1966). New Haven: Henry W. Wenning.
• Single Source: The Early Poems of William Everson, 1934-1940 (1966). Berkeley: Oyez.
• In the Fictive Wish (1967). Berkeley: Oyez.
• The Rose of Solitude (1967). Garden City, NY: Doubleday.
• The Springing of the Blade (1968) Reno, Nevada: The Black Rock Press.
• A Canticle to the Water Birds (1968). Berkeley: Eizo.
• The City Does Not Die (1969). Berkeley: Oyez.
• The Last Crusade (1969). Berkeley: Oyez.
• Who Is She That Looketh Forth as the Morning (1972). Santa Barbara: Capricorn Press.
• Tendril in the Mesh (1973). Aromas, California: Cayucos Books.
• Black Hills (1973). San Francisco: Didymus Press.
• Man-Fate: The Swan Song of Brother Antoninus (1974). New York: New Directions (W.W. Norton)
• River-Root: A Syzygy for the Bicentennial of These States (1976). Berkeley: Oyez.
• The Veritable Years, 1949-1966 (1978). Santa Barbara: Black Sparrow Press.
• The Masks Of Drought (1980). Santa Barbara: Black Sparrow Press.
• Birth of a Poet (1982). Santa Barbara: Black Sparrow Press

Autobiography and interviews

• Prodigious Thrust (1996). Santa Rosa, California: Black Sparrow Press.
• Naked Heart: Talking on Poetry, Mysticism, and the Erotic (1992). Albuquerque: University of New Mexico, College of Arts and Sciences.
• On Printing (1992). San Francisco: Book Club of California.
• Take Hold Upon the Future: Letters on Writers and Writing, 1938-1946 (1994). Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press.

Literary criticism

• Robinson Jeffers: Fragments of an Older Fury (1968) Berkeley: Oyez.
• Archetype West: The Pacific Coast as a Literary Region (1974). Berkeley: Oyez.
• Dionysus and the Beat: Four Letters on the Archetype (1977). Santa Barbara: Black Sparrow Press.
• The Excesses of God: Robinson Jeffers as a Religious Figure (1988). Stanford, California: Stanford University Press.

Sources

• Gelpi, Albert. Dark God of Eros: A William Everson Reader. Berkeley, CA: Heyday. 2003.
• Bartlett, Lee, and Campo, Allan. "William Everson: A Descriptive Bibliography, 1934-1976". Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press. 1977.

External links

• William Everson at the University of Illinois' Modern American Poetry website
• The Death of a Poet Dead link 3-4-2010
• William Everson at the Beat Page