The Excesses of God: Robinson Jeffers as a Religious Figure

by William Everson

A Stanford University Press classic.

Genres: Poetry

209 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1988

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

[Joe Ward · Rating 2 out of 5]

Everson is very precise and descriptive as he catagorizes and analyzes Robinson Jeffers and his poetry. Hence, his exposition proceeds seemingly inarguably -- the reader must reach the same ineluctable conclusions Everson achieves. But not so fast! A careful reading reveals that Everson slips in some assumptions based on his own religious biases, that ground the entire edifice of his argument on nothing more firm than his own opinion. For instance, Everson claims (or claims that Otto claims) that the feeling of the numinous is universal. Freud would disagree. When the author claims that Jeffer's poetry "unconsciously" proclaims transcendence, despite the poet's self-avowed adherence to an immanent Pantheism, Everson does injustice to the poet he avers to honor. When Everson covertly inserts opinion and bias into his argument, which the reader let alone Jeffers himself, may not have agreed with, and proceeds as if these opinions and biases were established fact, he declines into deceitfulness.

For many years Everson, aka "Brother Antonius," was a lay brother of the Dominican Order, and his theology is quite orthodox. His attempts to twist Jeffers into conformity with his own orthodoxy, is painful. Why, then, don't I rate this book less than four stars? Because, while I reject Everson's conclusions regarding Jeffers and his poetry, "The Excesses of God" is still a very interesting book. Everson has made me aware of just how closely and minutely theologians have dissected the nuances of religious thought. He also introduced me to the work of Rudolf Otto, which I intend to explore in greater depth. And there can be no question but what Everson greatly admired Robinson Jeffers, despite his efforts to force Jeffers into conformity to his own ideals. It's claimed that Everson is Jeffer's foremost disciple and poetic emulator. If this is so, it's a shame. Jeffers rates admirers and disciples who meet him on his own terms. He deserves to be appreciated widely by Pagans, Pantheists, shamans and mystics of all sorts, and not be delegated to the dubious care of this lone "Beat Friar" who misinterprets him.