Take Hold Upon the Future: Letters on Writers and Writing, 1938-1946

An uninhibited human document, this book reveals the inner workings of two very different minds struggling to meet the high standards of authorship they had set for themselves. Each served as a mentor to the other. Everson, known later as Brother Antoninus, a poet of the Beat Generation, comments trenchantly on Powell's novels (not published until the late 1970s) and Powell persuades Everson to reconsider words and images in his poems and give them titles. The letters include many insights on…