William Everson

de Lee Bartlett

In the annals of modern American letters, William Everson (1912-1994) holds prime place as a poet of conscience and consciousness of self, his richly textured verse mapping his extraordinary inner journey as social activist, Dominican brother, and preeminent religious and philosophical poet. In "William Everson: The Life of Brother Antoninus", Lee Bartlett charts the outer journey, drawing on the reminiscences of the poet, his friends, and a wealth of archival material. The life that Bartlett recalls begins in Sacramento, California, in 1912, and continues through to the present: Everson, from 1971, was poet-in-residence at Kresge College, the University of California at Santa Cruz. The years between were for the poet both prolific and hard. Everson the literary figure published thirty-seven books of poetry and five prose collections. He was been a Guggenheim fellow (1949), a Pulitzer Prize nominee (1959), and the recipient of the Poetry Society of America's Shelley Memorial Award (1978). Everson the man was a conscientious objector in World War II, for three and a half years confined to a work camp in Waldport, Oregon. He converted to Catholicism and joined the Dominican order in 1951 and, as Brother Antoninus, became one of the foremost Catholic poets of our time. In 1969, Everson dramatically broke his vows to marry the young woman he loved. "This is my habit", he said after a public reading, "and when I take it off, I take off my own skin, but I have to take it off to find my heart". In his poetry after that, during what he came to call his "integral years", Everson sought to express the harmony of the physical and the material. Lee Bartlett documents not only the secular and spiritual travails of a major American poet but projects the "crooked line" of an incarnational imperative in American poetry. Using exhaustive and original research, Bartlett provides us with our first look at the great heir of Emerson, Whitman, and Jeffers.