Everson, William

Everson, William

▪ American poet
in full  William Oliver Everson,  byname  Brother Antoninus 
born Sept. 10, 1912, Sacramento, Calif., U.S.
died June 3, 1994, Santa Cruz, Calif.

      American Roman Catholic poet whose works record a personal search for religious vision in a violent, corrupt world.

      Raised by Christian Scientist parents, Everson became an agnostic in his teens; while attending Fresno (California) State College, he read the verse of Robinson Jeffers (Jeffers, Robinson) and resolved to become a poet. His first book, These Are the Ravens, was published in 1935. He was drafted during World War II but served at a work camp for conscientious objectors in Waldport, Oregon, where he cofounded the Untide Press and printed his own poetry. After marrying his second wife, poet Mary Fabilli, he converted to Roman Catholicism and became a Dominican lay brother in 1951. For the next seven years he lived in monastic withdrawal, and his literary output decreased considerably. Everson fully returned to writing in 1957 with the composition of his long poem River-Root (1976), which depicts sexual love as a form of religious contemplation. He became identified with the San Francisco poetry renaissance of the Beat movement of the 1950s, and after 1957 he published most of his poetry as Brother Antoninus; in 1969 he returned to secular life and married for a third time. He taught poetry and letterpress until his retirement in 1982.

      Emphatic assertions, rugged landscapes, and harsh juxtapositions mark Everson's poetry. He considered his lifetime of work to form a trilogy, which he called The Crooked Lines of God and which is composed of The Residual Years: Poems 1934–1948 (1968), his early nature poetry; The Veritable Years: Poems 1949–1966 (1978), his religious poetry; and a projected third volume that was to have been entitled The Integral Years and was intended to contain his post-1966 poetry. In the 1980s he began writing an autobiographical epic, beginning with the cantos of In Medias Res (1984). Other collections of Everson's poetry include The Blood of the Poet (1994) and Prodigious Thrust, published posthumously in 1996.

* * *


Universalium. 2010.

Игры ⚽ Нужно сделать НИР?

Look at other dictionaries:

  • Everson, William — (Brother Antoninus) (1912–1994)    William Everson entered the Beat movement through his association with the San Francisco Renaissance. He had come to Berkeley in 1946, a displaced farmer who had lost his grape vineyard along with his first wife …   Encyclopedia of Beat Literature

  • William Everson — (September 10, 1912 – June 3, 1994), also known as Brother Antoninus, was an American poet of the Beat generation and was also an author, literary critic and small press printer.BeginningsEverson was born in Sacramento, California. His Christian… …   Wikipedia

  • William K. Everson — (April 8, 1929, Yeovil, Somerset, England April 14, 1996, New York City) was an archivist, author, critic, collector and film historian, who often discovered lost films. He was born Keith William Everson, but his admiration for the films of the… …   Wikipedia

  • William Everson (disambiguation) — William Everson is the name of:*William Everson (1912 ndash;1994), American beat poet *William K. Everson (1929 ndash;1996), English American film historian …   Wikipedia

  • Everson — is a surname, and may refer to* Cory Everson, an American female bodybuilder * Cromwell Everson, an Afrikaans and South African Composer (1925 1991) * Mark W. Everson, American Commissioner of Internal Revenue * Michael Everson, or his Unicode… …   Wikipedia

  • Everson v. Board of Education — SCOTUSCase Litigants=Everson v. Board of Education ArgueDate=November 20 ArgueYear=1946 DecideDate=February 10 DecideYear=1947 FullName=Arch R. Everson v. Board of Education of the Township of Ewing, et al. USVol=330 USPage=1 Citation=67 S. Ct.… …   Wikipedia

  • Everson — Cette page d’homonymie répertorie les différents sujets et articles partageant un même nom. Everson est un patronyme et un toponyme : Il peut être utilisé comme prénom : Everson Pereira da Silva, ancien footballeur brésilien. Everson… …   Wikipédia en Français

  • Everson — This interesting and unusual name is of early medieval English origin, and is a metronymic surname derived from the rare medieval female given name Eve , the name of the first bearer s mother. Metronymics are very uncommon as a group of surnames …   Surnames reference

  • William Claude Dukenfield — W. C. Fields W. C. Fields, de son vrai nom William Claude Dukenfield, est un jongleur, humoriste de vaudeville, scénariste et acteur américain né le 29 janvier 1880 à Darby, en banlieue de Philadelphie (Pennsylvanie, É. U.) et décédé le 25… …   Wikipédia en Français

  • William Claude Fields — W. C. Fields (eigentlich: William Claude Dukenfield; * 29. Januar 1880 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA; † 25. Dezember 1946 in Pasadena, Kalifornien) war ein US amerikanischer Unterhaltungskünstler, Drehbuchautor und Schauspieler. In… …   Deutsch Wikipedia

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link
Do a right-click on the link above
and select “Copy Link”