William Everson was born in Sacramento, California, on
September 10, 1912. Brought up by his parents as a Christian Scientist, he
became an agnostic during his teens. He attended Fresno College but dropped
out to write poetry and to marry. Drafted as a conscientious objector in 1943,
Everson spent the war years in a succession of work camps in the Pacific
Northwest. After the war he went to San Francisco and was one of what he calls
"the anarchists and poets around Kenneth Rexroth." He had divorced
and remarried, and his new wife introduced him to Catholicism. In 1949 they
separated to enter the Catholic Church, and after a year on a Guggenheim
Fellowship and another doing work in the slums of Oakland, Everson entered the
Dominican Order of Preachers as Brother Antoninus. After six years of
self-study and searching he rejoined the literary scene in California. In 1969
he reported that he had left the Order, but he is still identified by the
Church and among poets as Brother Antoninus.
__________
Ellmann, Richard and Robert O'Clair. Modern Poems: An
Introduction to Poetry.
New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1973, p. 314.
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