Word: antoninus
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Moment of Faith. Brother Antoninus, 46, came to his vocation through labyrinthine ways. Born William Everson in Sacramento, Calif., to a Norwegian-born bandmaster turned printer, he put in some time at Fresno State College, married his 1 high school sweetheart ("A square thing, but it happens to be the truth"), and was overwhelmed by the poetry of Robinson Jeffers. His other literary landmarks: D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover and Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer. "They were the crystallizing books of my pre-Catholic formation," says Brother Antoninus. "They have a kind...
...rocks, he joined the group of creative and not-so-creative bums around Poet Kenneth Rexroth that began the "San Francisco renaissance." before Beatniks Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg came out from Manhattan and put the movement in the news. "I'm pre-beat," says Brother Antoninus...
...became a Catholic. Since he and his girl could not be married (the church ruled both of their previous marriages valid), they split up. After a year writing poetry on a Guggenheim fellowship, Everson joined the Catholic Worker movement in Oakland. Fourteen months later he became Dominican Brother Antoninus at Oakland's St. Albert's College. Except for an unsuccessful attempt to study for the priesthood ("I couldn't see it through for psychological reasons") and a three-week protest walkout (he objected to the installation of a TV set in the priory), Everson has served faithfully...
...Route Back. For his poetry readings Brother Antoninus takes off his white tunic, black scapular and hood, to dress his 6-ft. 4-in. frame in clerical street garb-a plain black suit, black tie. Says he: "Society has two structures, the institutional and the visionary. There has to be a synthesis. I feel that I have found that religion in which the institutional and the visionary are reconcilable . . . The beat have repudiated the institutional. They have no route back theologically...
...Brother Antoninus' dialogue is in his poetry, which he prefers to have spoken rather than set in type. Sample...