www.kerouacalley.com
A Directory of the Beat Generation
and the Beat Related on the World Wide Web
*Jack Kerouac Alley (formerly Adler Alley or Adler Place) is a one-way alleyway in Chinatown, San Francisco, California that connects Grant Avenue and Columbus Avenue, running between "Vesuvio Cafe"
(255 Columbus Ave.) and Lawrence Ferlinghetti's "City Lights Books" (261 Columbus Ave.).
William Everson (Brother Antoninus, O.P.)
1912-1994
William Everson Quotes
"O Poets! Shamans of the word! When will you recover the trance-like rhythms, the subliminal imagery, the haunting sense of possession, the powerful inflection and enunciation to effect the vision? Throw off this malaise, this evasion, this attitudinizing and sickliness of urbanity. Penetrate to the discord in yourself, the rootlessness, and induce the trance that will heal the rift within. Shamanize! Shamanize! The American destiny is in your hands." -William Everson (Brother Antoninus, O.P.)
Out of the Ash
Solstice of the dark, the absolute
Zero of the year. Praise God
Who comes for us again, our lives
Pulled to their fisted knot,
Cinched tight with cold, drawn
To the heart’s constriction; our faces
Seamed like clinkers in the grate,
Hands like tongs—Praise God
That Christ, phoenix imortal,
Springs up again from solstice ash,
Drives his equatorial ray
Into our cloud, emblazons
Our stiff brow, fries
Our chill tears. Come Christ,
Most gentle and throat-pulsing Bird!
O come, sweet Child! Be gladness
In our church. Waken with anthems
Our bare rafters! O phoenix
Forever! Virgin-wombed
and burning in the dark,
Be born! Be Born!