ARTICLES

The Road Less Traveled

SAN FRANCISCO BEAT POET TURNS TRADITIONAL CATHOLIC

By Stephen Schwartz

"God's grace is everything," the grey-bearded man says, simply and spontaneously. For believing Catholics, as well as faithful members of the other monotheistic religions, such a comment is hardly out of the ordinary. But from the mouth of the speaker in question, the poet Philip Lamantia, it comes at the end of a long, complicated, and at times, tormented journey.

Philip Lamantia will pass his 71st birthday on October 23. Since his emergence as a writer, when he was a teenager during the Second World War, he has ranked as an outstanding figure in American verse.

Raised in the Italian culture of San Francisco, where he was exposed to, but not taught, traditional Catholicism, Lamantia burst into American literature with a unique series of surreal, transcendental poems.

"Discovered'' by the anti-Communist author Kenneth Rexroth, Lamantia saw his work printed to extraordinary acclaim in New York in 1943, when he was only 15.

He was called "a voice that rises in a hundred years'' by the exiled French surrealist Andre Breton.

In New York, Lamantia frequented the circles of Tennessee Williams and other leading modernists, before returning to San Francisco after World War II ended.

The circle of poets around Rexroth -- including Lamantia, Robert Duncan, and William Everson -- differed from its immediate predecessors in San Francisco mainly, at the beginning, because of their break with radical leftism. However, as Rexroth himself commented, "one of the characteristics of all these new people was, to put it bluntly, mysticism."

Each of these four writers pursued divine illumination in a different manner: of them, only Duncan, notwithstanding great literary gifts, fell into paganism. By contrast, the other three committed themselves to the Lord, and to Christ.

Rexroth himself, although fascinated by Buddhism, was also drawn to the Judaism of Martin Buber. He read extensively in the Christian mysticism of Jakob Boehme and was a admirer of the Jesuit philosopher Bernard Lonergan. He raised his daughters in the Anglican church, and at his death was a communicant of Orthodox Christianity, which he considered closest to the original Greek-language Gospels. At his death in 1982, he was buried in the Russian Orthodox Church.

William Everson became a member of the Dominican Order as Brother Antoninus, O.P. in 1951, remaining a major Catholic intellectual figure in the Bay Area until 1969, when he renounced his vows. He died in 1994.

Lamantia's development was less sedate, to say the least. But that outcome was predicted by the title of one of his earliest poems, "There Are Many Pathways to the Garden.''

Under the influence of Rexroth, Lamantia also began reading sacred texts, but he was a turbulent youth, and had to work through drugs, anarchism, and other deviations. In the late 1940s, he returned to New York and encountered the group of aspiring writers associated with Allen Ginsberg. Lamantia's influence led Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and the other "Beat'' writers to come to San Francisco, where they met Rexroth.

In 1956, a historic poetry reading at the Six Gallery in the Marina District of San Francisco led to the emergence of the "Beats" on the national scene. The reading, with Rexroth as master of ceremonies, included Lamantia, the Buddhist poets Gary Snyder and Philip Whalen, and the young painter and poet Michael McClure, as well as Ginsberg, who used the occasion to read publicly his poem "Howl'' for the first time.

Californian -- and American -- literary history was changed forever. However, in those years none of the "Beats" promoted leftism; rather, their "rebellion'' remained oriented toward mysticism.

Within the group Lamantia had gone the furthest toward seeking God's grace. While travelling in the Indian districts of northern Mexico, he had undergone a profound Christian vision and came, like Everson, under the influence of the Dominicans. Lamantia began writing verse reflecting the power of Christian mercy, especially as conveyed by the Mother of God.

He produced a collection of poems, Ekstasis, issued in 1959, that reflected the great impact of this revelation. Today, this slender, small book, printed with great beauty by the San Francisco poetry publisher, Auerhahn Press, is one of the rarest such volumes. A copy for sale through a computer book search fetches $250.

Lamantia's verse during this period of Christian grandeur is filled with the mystery of faith:

There is this distance between me and what I see
everywhere immanence of the presence of God...
I long for the luminous darkness of God.

Which is why his recent comments, made in an interview with this reporter near the Shrine of Saint Francis in North Beach, are so significant. A year after publication of his collected works (Bed of Sphinxes, City Lights, 1997), Lamantia has returned to the Catholic tradition.

He is avid about this love, repeatedly declaring that he will die in the faith. Over the past year, the poet reread the entire Old Testament, and has returned to the Sacrament of the Eucharist, thanks to the spiritual direction of the Conventual Franciscans in North Beach.

Lamantia is a great admirer of Pope John Paul II, commenting, "Holy Father is superb," and expressing the hope that, as in Poland, the Pope will act to rescue the Albanian Catholics from the terror inflicted on them by Serbo-communist imperialism. He considers John Paul II "the greatest prose stylist among the Popes since Leo XIII," whom he praises for the balanced, Christian message of his famous encyclicals on social justice.

He also prefers William Levada to John Quinn as the archbishop of San Francisco. In general, Lamantia is a traditional, mystical Catholic who emphasizes the power of the Lord and the liberation offered through the Gospels, rather than the liberal political excitements favored by many professed Catholics today. According to Lamantia, only "God's grace" is saving San Francisco from the paganism, sexual degeneracy and public embrace of deviant behavior that define it.

"It's all about the St. Francis Shrine, the relic there, and the truth about St. Francis, who was the very greatest of poets," he insists excitedly.

Lamantia does not oppose the vernacular mass, provided it is not given a modernist expression. But he is fondest of the ritual that weds the language of traditional culture with the most intense sacred meaning, such as the Coptic Christian mass he viewed in Egypt some years ago.

"I'm interested in visiting Uniate congregations, where the Byzantine rite is used, and where the communicants stand through the mass," he states.

In a discussion on October 4, the Feast of Saint Francis, Lamantia spoke with admiration of the great but neglected religious poet John Clare (1793-1864), who wrote:

I long for scenes, where man hath never trod
A place where woman never smiled or wept
There to abide with my Creator, God.

The poet's embrace of the Franciscan philosophy is profound. He is deeply moved, as other writers have been, by the inspiring life of the Conventual Franciscan Saint Joseph of Copertino (1603-1663), for whom the South Bay town is named. A visionary, the saint is known for his simplicity as well as the levitations brought about by his ecstatic worship.

"My link with the Franciscans is forever," Lamantia says.

TOP