Kenneth Rexroth

[charlieboi24]

He sounds like W.B. Yeats

[earinsound]

@charlieboi24

Yeats was Irish...

Rexroth a brilliant polymath who influenced many poets, and was from Illinois, I do believe.

[RoberticusXII]

I love your hairstyle, where did you get your glasses from?

Love it, keep up the good work mate.

[wayneadrien]

...like many great writers, Kenneth enjoyed a drink, by the look of his shnozzola.

[1dfwren]

Kenneth was a friend of mine. Because his father was a drunk, he despised drunkness. For most of his life he was a clean-living mountaineer.

If you did a little reading, you might have discovered that fact.

[wayneadrien]

My, aren't we sensitive? Did I say he was a bad writer?

[zonardos]

Some day mountains will be named after you and Sacco.

They will be here and your name with them,

"When these days are but a dim remembering of the time

When man was wolf to man."

I think men will be remembering you a long time

Standing on the mountains

Many men, a long time, comrade.

[zonardos]

I saw you both marching in an army

You with the red and black flag, Sacco with the rattlesnake banner.

I kicked steps up the last snow bank and came

To the indescribably blue and fragrant

Polemonium and the dead sky and the sterile

Crystalline granite and final monolith of the summit.

These are the things that will last a long time, Vanzetti,

I am glad that once on your day I have stood among them.

[zonardos]

The bottle stayed on its rock, nobody could hit it.

Looking back over the peaks and canyons from the last lake,

The pattern of human beings seemed simpler

Than the diagonals of water and stone.

Climbing the chute, up the melting snow and broken rock,

I remembered what you said about Sacco,

How it slipped your mind and you demanded it be read into the record.

Traversing below the ragged arête,

One cheek pressed against the rock

The wind slapping the other,

[zonardos]

Crossing the brilliant mile-square meadow

Illuminated with asters and cyclamen,

The pollen of the lodgepole pines drifting

With the shifting wind over it and the blue

And sulphur butterflies drifting with the wind,

I saw you in the sour prison light, saying,

"Goodbye comrade."  In the basin under the crest

Where the pines end and the Sierra primrose begins,

A party of lawyers was shooting at a whiskey bottle.

[zonardos]

How America was forever a different place

Afterwards for many. In the morning

We swam in the cold transparent lake, the blue

Damsel flies on all the reeds like millions

Of narrow metallic flowers, and I thought

Of you behind the grille in Dedham, Vanzetti,

Saying, "Who would ever have thought we would make this history?"

[zonardos]

We sat up late while Deneb moved over the zenith

And I told Marie all about Boston, how it looked

That last terrible week, how hundreds stood weeping

Impotent in the streets that last midnight.

I told her how those hours changed the lives of thousands,

[zonardos]

CLIMBING MILESTONE MOUNTAIN

August 22, 1937

For a month now, wandering over the Sierras,

A poem had been gathering in my mind,

Details of significance and rhythm,

The way poems do, but still lacking a focus.

Last night I remembered the date and it all

Began to grow together and take on purpose.

[zonardos]

I feel the emotion. That's a wonderful moment. Vanzetti is such a great human being. A true anarchist, an anonymous militant that became "great" not by any choice. But by a the fate of political and racist hatred. On sunday, the "perfect" poltician was elected president here in France, a liar, a fool, a very clever idiot, what a difference with the ethics of Sacco & Vanzetti.

[pantherinsnow]

Oh my god... I never thought I would be able to see this man alive, on film, and I just tonight thought to check YouTube. Rexroth is far and away my favorite poet, and this is a fantastic treat to be able to see him reading his work. Is there more like this? Where can I get it?

[nozerty]

everytime he hits an s the back of my neck gets an excrutiating pain....i have NO clue why but wow thats weird

[PatMcHugh]

My all time favorite poet! Thank you for posting this!