The Beat Friar
"I am a man of God," said the tall, black-clad man as he smiled shyly athis audience. "I'm beat to the square, and square to the beat, andthat's my vocation." The Prior of his Dominican monastery wouldprobably express the vocation differently, but he gladly permitsBrother Antoninus to give readings of his own poems, as he is doingthis week in Los Angeles for the Commonweal Club. His poetry and hiswhole career may be I way out, but his purpose is to move men way in toChrist.
Moment of Faith. Brother Antoninus, 46, came to his vocation throughlabyrinthine ways. Born William Everson in Sacramento, Calif., to aNorwegian-born bandmaster turned printer, he put in some time at FresnoState College, married his 1 high school sweetheart , and was overwhelmed by the poetryof Robinson Jeffers. His other literary landmarks: D. H. Lawrence'sLady Chatterley's Lover and Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer. "They werethe crystallizing books of my pre-Catholic formation," says BrotherAntoninus. "They have a kind of terrible vitality that enabled me tostrip the merely conventional away and expose my soul so that when themoment of faith actually came, I was free within myself to make the actof faith."
Bill Everson learned about religious anarchy at a camp for conscientiousobjectors during the war. When that was over, his marriage on therocks, he joined the group of creative and not-so-creative bums aroundPoet Kenneth Rexroth that began the "San Francisco renaissance." beforeBeatniks Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg came out from Manhattan andput the movement in the news. "I'm pre-beat," says Brother Antoninus.
He moved in with a divorcee who was a painter, writer and Trotskyitetrying to find her way back to the Roman Catholic Church. "She wasgoing to Mass when I met her, so I went along because I couldn't standbeing deserted. I hated the religion. Catholicism intruded a ritualbetween God and man. As an anarchist, I couldn't stand the idea of aninstitution between God and man."
But on Christmas Eve in 1948, he became a Catholic. Since he and hisgirl could not be married , they split up. After a year writing poetry on aGuggenheim fellowship, Everson joined the Catholic Worker movement inOakland. Fourteen months later he became Dominican Brother Antoninus atOakland's St. Albert's College. Except for an unsuccessful attempt tostudy for the priesthood and a three-week protest walkout , Everson has served faithfully,washing dishes, scrubbing floors, making beds and working in the printshop. He explains: "I live, under obedience, the life of a vowedbrother. But I am not vowed. I could leave any time, or they could sendme away."
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