"The Poet Is Dead" is a moving elegy [to Robinson Jeffers] in which the living poet who is with us now, mourned the passing of the poet recently dead. But instead of writing a conventional elegy, Everson remembered Jeffers' own earlier poetry, especially "Post Mortem"; and, borrowing some of Jeffers' imagery and poetic phrases, spoke as it were with the tongue of the dead poet, in order to realize his presence in the world which he had just left. These two poems complement each other—the first looking forward to the time when the poet should have died; the second remembering the dead poet and naturalizing him in our living world. (p. 4)

The strophes of "The Poet Is Dead" alternate between images of nature (the natural environment in which Jeffers lived), and images of human nature (the nature of the dead poet)…. The parallelism and repetition of the imagery subtly emphasize that the poet, both in body and in spirit, was integrally a part of physical nature—his "pen, splintered on the excesses of vision." Then, throughout one extended metaphor, the poet's body seems magically to become one with the wild rock coast which he loved…. The poem succeeds in naturalizing Jeffers, both body and spirit, in the larger world which he had just left.

Further, this process of naturalizing the visionary poet has the effect of assuaging some of his own fears, expressed in "Post Mortem." In this new poem, which might have been entitled "Post Post Mortem," the poet's ghost becomes no longer an "impotent voice on the sea-wind." By means of his naturalization in the world after his death, the poet's body is rescued from the embalming process which has been called "the American way of death," in which the reality of death is disguised with rouge and cosmetics. In Everson's poem the impotent ghost becomes refleshed. (pp. 6-7)

Finally, even the voice of the poet who is dead seems to speak again through the voice of his disciple. Not only the dead body, but the "voice on the sea-wind" returns, and both body and spirit become realized anew. For Everson's poem remembers phrases and recalls images from the earlier poetry of Jeffers: from "Post Mortem," from "The Bed by the Window," from "The Wolf Who Died Snapping," and from "To Death"—a poem in Hungerfield, the last volume published in Jeffers' lifetime. Addressing "Death," Jeffers had written: "I think of you as a great king," and continued: "You have a sister named Life, an opulent treacherous woman / Blonde and a harlot…." Now Everson's poem echoes these words:

         Now the opulent
         Treacherous woman called Life
         Forsakes her claim. Blond and a harlot
         She once drank joy from his narrow loins.
         She broke his virtue in her knees.

But these particular words and phrases, first used by Jeffers and now repeated by Everson, seemed to me to emphasize the life-denying aspect of Jeffers, which had increased as he grew older. And as I read and reread the poem, this single strophe disturbed me. Everson seemed to accept Jeffers' characterization of life as "blonde and a harlot," and even to universalize the metaphor. Flatly stated, he seemed to agree: "Life is a harlot." And so, about five years ago, I formulated my objections, and spoke to the author about them.

Everson readily agreed that the personification of Life as a harlot violated the norms of language and morality. But when I accused him of adopting the phrase, he emphasized that it was a quotation—as of course it was. But it seemed to me that he also had adopted it, and to the degree that he had identified himself with the dead poet, had made it his own. Moreover, his own final line had declared, "She broke his virtue in her knees," and this seemed to reaffirm the justice of Jeffers' metaphor. If "Life" destroys man's virtue by seducing him to sex, then "virtue" is not manhood in its fulness, but a repudiation of Life.

Well, that is the problem. There are several possible answers.

First, and most personally: when Brother Antoninus wrote "The Poet Is Dead," he was a monk in the Dominican order. These lines echoed the religious convictions of the "Brother." In his "Foreword" to the poem, he suggested this interpretation: "my incorporation of direct figures from Jeffers' work" represented "my need to bury, once and for all, those elements of my own past with him." But now, once again, Brother Antoninus has become the secular poet, William Everson.

Second, and more important: "The Poet Is Dead" changes and develops as it progresses toward its conclusion. After remembering Jeffers' early life, and after seeming to identify with his "excesses of vision," the poem not only naturalizes Jeffers, but also naturalizes his poetic vision in the modern world…. As the poem moves toward its conclusion, it moves toward a larger vision.

For "the dark thoughts" to which Jeffers' poetry gave expression have become increasingly the preoccupation of the modern world. The "sheer/Excesses of vision" upon which his "pen/Splintered," projected only too realistically the "bad dreams" of many modern poets and authors. Even the violent hatred of civilization which gave rise to Jeffers' grotesque metaphor of "Life" as "blonde and a harlot" has found realization. (pp. 7-9)

Finally, the two lines of "The Poet Is Dead" which first seemed flawed and distasteful, may actually focus most clearly the crucial problem, both of Jeffers' poetry and of modern civilization. Jeffers conceived of "Life" as "blonde and a harlot." Brother Antoninus developed the metaphor: "She broke his virtue in her knees." But the very language which Antoninus used to describe the life of Jeffers echoes not only the poetic language of Jeffers but the conventional language of orthodox Christianity as well. It suggests that much of the imagery and metaphor of the English language which we all use has been borrowed from the iconography of Christianity. There is the suggestion of sin in "She once drank joy from his narrow loins"—a suggestion which the final line makes explicit.

The apparent flaw in Jeffers' poetry derives from its failure to resolve the fundamental dilemma of our civilization. That most natural of human instincts, sex, inherits not only the guilt-feelings of traditional Christianity, but also the denunciations of futurists who fear "the women's abundance." The greatness of his poetry lies in the completeness of its expression of both conflicting values: the narratives describe sexual emotions so vividly that they sometimes seem pornographic, yet they also describe frustrations and guilt so vividly that they sometimes seem moralistic. If the poetry fails to produce the catharsis of classical tragedy, it is because it realizes this ambivalence so completely that it refuses to ascribe any "tragic flaw" to the protagonists. The flaw lies rather in that "monster," civilization; yet when his modern maenads roam the barren hills of Point Sur they find only madness. Jeffers' poetry speaks to us the more urgently because it prophesies our problems, although it does not solve them. (pp. 9-10)

[River-root: a syzygy for the Bicentennial of these States] deals with a "syzygy," a coupling, in this case viewed specifically in the act of intercourse. Taking the act as both psychical as well as physical, an act of creation and thus true communion with the divine, Everson exercises delicacy in depicting the physiological concomitants. His juxtaposition of images from nature, such as the river as a seminal force, however, does not altogether succeed. Reminiscent of Whitman, Robinson Jeffers, Allen Ginsberg, his San Francisco colleague, and occasionally Hart Crane, Everson fits into a somewhat old-fashioned tradition in American poetry. He is in full command of the techniques, producing a free-flowing and supple verse, with occasional over-alliteration and exaggerated imagery. A worthwhile example of an erotic poem that succeeds, as few do, as a depiction of sex and as good, sometimes inspired verse.