Obituary
‘Poet King’ Of Berkeley Renaissance Dead at 81

Landis Everson, a key but often overlooked poet of the Berkeley Renaissance, took his own life last month. He was 81.

While studying at UC Berkeley, Everson inspired and impressed Jack Spicer, Robert Duncan and Robin Blaser, the central figures of a cultural movement of the 1940s and 1950s often compared to that of the bohemian Left Bank of Paris.

After the Berkeley movement dissolved, Everson quit writing and didn’t gain recognition until more than 40 years later, when he won a national award and published his first book. He was at the height of his career when a series of strokes left him unable to write.

Everson had been talking about committing suicide for months when he sold his house in San Luis Obispo and moved to Mill Valley with an old friend, said Ben Mazer, a poet who researched the Berkeley Renaissance as a graduate student.

Everson was found on a bench in a public area behind a restaurant in Mill Valley, said Marin County Coroner Ken Holmes. Mazer said Everson had shot himself with his World War II service revolver.

The last to join the Berkeley Renaissance group, “he was a poet among equals at the very beginning,” Blaser said. “All three of us knew that we had found a young, marvelous poet.”

Blaser said Everson, who drove a convertible and was a member of the Sigma Nu Fraternity, stood out from the movement’s other members because of his wealth and lifestyle, But he said everyone was infatuated with Everson’s charisma.

In a letter to Duncan, Spicer wrote, “You were as much able to give Landis a princedom of poetry as I was able to give him the moon. Neither of us had them to give, and both of them belonged to him anyway.” When Duncan wrote back, he called Everson the “Poet King.”

Everson had poetry published in numerous magazines, including UC Berkeley’s literary magazine, Occident, where he was editor in 1948.

As the group disbanded, Everson stopped writing. He made a living for 10 years by selling paintings, then took up renovating houses in San Luis Obispo.

After retiring, Everson gardened and did crossword puzzles. Then, in 2003, he received a phone call from Mazer, who was working for a literary magazine.

“I was intrigued by Landis and I got in touch with him and asked him if he had any of his old poems that we could print in Fulcrum,” Mazer said.

Everson had stockpiled sleeping pills and was planning on killing himself because he was bored with life, Mazer said. The two became friends and within a few weeks, Everson announced to Mazer that he had begun writing again.

During the next two-and-a-half years, Everson wrote 300 poems.

In 2005, Mazer submitted Everson’s poetry to the Poetry Foundation’s newly established Emily Dickinson First Book Award.

“His (submission) came in with about 1,100 other manuscripts and was selected through a blind reading,” said Anne Halsey, the foundation’s spokesperson. “It was a unique voice, well developed.”

The following year, Everson’s first book, “Everything Preserved: Poems 1955-2005,” was published.

“We were having an enormous amount of fun. He was really enjoying his life as a poet again,” Mazer said.

But while visiting Mazer in Boston, Everson suffered the first of a long series of strokes.

“Right at the moment when he was writing his greatest stuff, he was cut short by this stroke that he had,” Mazer said.

“For a poet in particular, the condition of not being able to put words together and join them has to be the most frustrating thing in the world,” said poet Ron Silliman, a former UC Berkeley student.

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