William Everson was an archetypal bard, deeply rooted in place, with an immense ego modulated by a disarming humility. Although he entered adulthood espousing the agnosticism of his father, during his college years he came under the influence of Robinson Jeffers's poetry, converted to pantheism, and, as a consequence, became a conscientious objector during World War II. In the postwar years he was an anarchist-pacifist Catholic Worker, a Dominican friar, and, finally, the premier shaman of the coastal mountains north of Santa Cruz, California.

In a poetic career that spanned sixty years, Everson published more than fifty volumes--including thirty-five of his own poetry, seven of Jeffers scholarship and criticism, five of collected essays, several award-winning handpress editions, a half-completed autobiographical poetic epic, and a posthumously published prose autobiography. Although he repeatedly claimed Jeffers as his source, inspiration, and guide, the two poets were clearly distinct. There are some...