William Everson: The Shaman's Call

Herrmann's first book "The Shaman's Call" (2009) is a record of his conversations with the California poet-shaman and beat poet, William Everson, formerly Brother Antoninus of the Dominican Order. Herrmann was a student at UC Santa Cruz during the years 1978-1982, when he had the good fortune to be a teaching assistant and facilitator of dream groups in William Everson's celebrated course "Birth of a Poet" at Kresge College, on the UCSC campus. In "Birth of a Poet," Herrmann and many students felt personally that they were being initiated into the meaning of being a poet by one of the seminal fathers of American poetry. From the fall of 1980 to the winter of 1981, Herrmann worked for Everson in his course, introducing students to the art and science of dream interpretation from a Jungian point of view. He led dream groups every week and taught Jung's theory of dream interpretation. The coursework was to read Jung and post-Jungian writers, keep a dream journal, and write a final paper at the end of the quarter on the subject of vocational clarification through dream. The goal of Everson's course at UCSC was to deepen students' understanding of themselves, their unconscious and instinctive motivations as well as to develop their ability to express themselves through poetic writing and in that way to gain a deeper understanding of their literary vocation.