The latest addition to the California Legacy Series, a joint publishing venture between Santa Clara University and Heyday Books, is Dark Gods of Eros: A William Everson Reader (Santa Clara University and Heyday Books, 2003, $22.95). In May, former U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Hass and others gathered at SCU to celebrate the publication of this new book with an evening of poetry in tribute to the life and work of William Everson (1912-1994), who was many things in his life: farmer, conscientious objector, agnostic, pantheist, Dominican friar, fine printer, and deeply religious poet.
The book contains a fascinating array of work by Everson, including poems from many different times in his life; essays, letters, and autobiography; and examples of his beautiful printing work. In addition, readers will find an informative chronology of Everson’s life, and compelling essays about him by fellow poets including Hass and others such as Denise Levertov, Czelaw Milosz, Robert Bly, and Robert Creeley.
“William Everson knew California as well as anyone could,” says Terry Beers, California Legacy series editor and a professor of English at SCU. “Its landscapes provoked in him early a response that would in various forms became the principal theme in his work: the relation of body and spirit.”
For more information on the California Legacy Series, see www.californialegacy.org.