The Veritable Years: Poems 1949-1966

by William Everson

This comprehensive scholarly edition gathers all the verse, including previously unpublished pieces, written by Everson during his eighteen years as a Dominican lay brother, Brother Antoninus. Taken together, these poems provide a passionate record of Everson/Antoninus's struggle to maintain strict vows of celibacy. That struggle is fraught with dramatic tension, as the poet strives to establish a fragile equilibrium between opposed psychic polarities of Spirit and Flesh.

375 pages, Hardcover

First published February 1, 1999

About the author

Also known as Brother Antoninus, William Everson was an American poet of the Beat Generation, San Francisco Renaissance and was also a literary critic and small press printer.
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 (CPS) work camp for conscientious objectors in Oregon. In the camp at Waldport, Oregon, with other poets, artists and actors, 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 in Oakland, California. He took the name "Brother Antoninus" when he joined the Dominican Order 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 in 1972, and its effects on him became a powerful element in his public readings.

Reviews

[Paul Varner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Also known as Brother Antoninus. Sometimes dubbed the Beatnik friar. Here is some if the best Christian poetry of the 20th century written by a major member of the Beat Movement.