Landis Everson was an American poet. In the late 1940s, he was a member of the Berkeley Renaissance along with his friends Robert Duncan

Robert Duncan (poet)

Robert Duncan was an American poet and a student of H.D. and the Western esoteric tradition who spent most of his career in and around San Francisco. Though associated with any number of literary traditions and schools, Duncan is often identified with the poets of the New American Poetry and Black...

, Jack Spicer

Jack Spicer

Jack Spicer was an American poet often identified with the San Francisco Renaissance. In 2009, My Vocabulary Did This to Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer won the American Book Award for poetry.-Life and work:...

, and Robin Blaser

Robin Blaser

Robin Francis Blaser was an author and poet in both the United States and Canada.-Personal background:Born in Denver, Colorado, Blaser grew up in Idaho, and came to Berkeley, California, in 1944. There he met Jack Spicer and Robert Duncan, becoming a key figure in the San Francisco Renaissance of...

. Everson was the inaugural recipient of the Emily Dickinson Award from the Poetry Foundation

Poetry Foundation

The Poetry Foundation is a Chicago-based American foundation created to promote poetry in the wider culture. It was formed from Poetry magazine, which it continues to publish, with a 2003 gift of $200 million from philanthropist Ruth Lilly....

.

Overview

Everson was born and grew up in Coronado, California

Coronado, California

Coronado, also known as Coronado Island, is an affluent resort city located in San Diego County, California, 5.2 miles from downtown San Diego. Its population was 24,697 at the 2010 census, up from 24,100 at the 2000 census. U.S. News and World Report lists Coronado as one of the most expensive...

. He attended the University of Redlands

University of Redlands

The University of Redlands is a private liberal arts and sciences university located in Redlands, California. The university's campus sits on near downtown Redlands. The university was founded in 1907 and was associated with the American Baptist Church. The land for the university was donated by...

 in Southern California.

Everson, Spicer, and Blaser participated in a poetry group that met on Sundays up until 1960. Duncan was excluded from this group. Around this time James Herndon published Everson's pamphlet Postcard from Eden. His work also appeared in John Ashbery

John Ashbery

John Lawrence Ashbery is an American poet. He has published more than twenty volumes of poetry and won nearly every major American award for poetry, including a Pulitzer Prize in 1976 for his collection Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror. But Ashbery's work still proves controversial...

 & Harry Mathews

Harry Mathews

Harry Mathews is an American author of various novels, volumes of poetry and short fiction, and essays.-Life:Born in New York City to an upper class family, Mathews was educated at private schools there and at the Groton School in Massachusetts before enrolling at Princeton University in 1947...

's Locus Solus in 1962.

Jack Spicer died in 1965; Robin Blaser moved to Vancouver

Vancouver

Vancouver is a coastal seaport city on the mainland of British Columbia, Canada. It is the hub of Greater Vancouver, which, with over 2.3 million residents, is the third most populous metropolitan area in the country,...

; and Everson stopped writing poetry.

The Boston

Boston

Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...

 poet, Ben Mazer, came across Everson's work while he was putting together a special feature on the Berkeley Renaissance for Fulcrum

Fulcrum (annual)

Fulcrum, An annual of poetry and aesthetics is a United States literary periodical that has been published since 2002. It is edited by Philip Nikolayev and Katia Kapovich...

. Mazer's interest encouraged Everson to start writing poetry again.

His collection, Everything Preserved: Poems 1955-2005 (ISBN 1555974538), edited by Mazer, was published in 2006. This volume collects the poems Everson wrote in his two periods of writing: between 1955 and 1960, and then his later poems written between 2003 and 2005. Towards the end of his life, Everson lived in San Luis Obispo, California

San Luis Obispo, California

San Luis Obispo is a city in California, located roughly midway between San Francisco and Los Angeles on the Central Coast. Founded in 1772 by Spanish Fr. Junipero Serra, San Luis Obispo is one of California’s oldest communities...

.

Death and legacy

The initial reports of Landis's death were shrouded in mystery. It was reported by Marin County wire services that Landis's death was an apparent suicide using a World War Two standard issue service revolver.

External links

• Interview at Jacket (magazine)
  Jacket (magazine)
  Jacket is an on-line literary periodical edited by the Australian poet John Tranter. The first issue was in October 1997.Each new number of the magazine is posted at the Web site piece by piece until the new issue is full, when the next issue starts. Past issues remain posted as well...
  
  
• Landis Everson 1926-2007 A "cyber-tombeau
  Tombeau
  A tombeau is a musical composition commemorating the death of a notable individual. The term derives from the French word for "tomb" or "tombstone". The vast majority of tombeaux date from the 17th century and were composed for lute or other plucked string instruments...
  
  " at Silliman's Blog by poet Ron Silliman
  Ron Silliman
  Ron Silliman is an American poet. He has written and edited over 30 books, and has had his poetry and criticism translated into 12 languages. He is often associated with language poetry. Between 1979 and 2004, Silliman wrote a single poem, The Alphabet...
  
  includes comments, tributes, and links