5 Poems by kenneth Rexroth

Kenneth Rexroth (1905-1982)


"...Love [is the] key to truly realizing one's existence." Kenneth Rexroth (1)

Born in South Bend, Indiana December 22, 1905, Kenneth Rexroth's mother died in 1916. His father died in 1918. His mother had home schooled him. His father was a pharmaceutical salesperson, and drank heavily. Rexroth moved in with his aunt after his parent's deaths. He began publishing when he was fifteen.

After being expelled from High School, Kenneth Rexroth educated himself by attending literary salons. He hitchhiked across the country at nineteen working odd jobs: he worked as a reporter, a soda jerk, a wrestler, a clerk and as a forest service trail hand. He explored Mexico and South America and then spent a week in Paris where he met avant-garde artists including Tristan Tzara. He began corresponding with Ezra Pound George Oppen and Louis Zukofsky in the 1930's.

In the 1940's Rexroth was promoting other poets on his radio program including LeRoi Jones, Philip Whalen and Denise Levertov. Robert Duncan, Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder were some of the poets who attended a weekly salon he hosted during these years. These weekly meetings set the ground for the San Francisco renaissance. He registered as a conscientious objector during World War II, and served as a psychiatric orderly. He also helped Japanese American internees. (2)

Rexroth emceed the Six Gallery reading on October 7, 1955 where Ginsberg read "Howl." After, he was a defense witness at Ginsberg's obscenity trial resulting from the reading. Though he had promoted and shared ideas with the Beats he would later reply to Time's labeling of him as "father of the Beats," by retorting "an entomologist is not a bug." (3)

Rexroth was a pacifist and involved himself in social justice and ecological issues. Lawrence Ferlinghetti said Rexroth identified himself as philosophical anarchist.




He was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship in 1948. And in 1974 he received a Fullbright scholarship to study in Japan where he translated Japanese poetry. He died in Santa Barbara in 1982. His epitaph reads: "As the full moon rises/ The swan sings in sleep/ On the lake of the mind."

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Text of poems:
Oaxaca 1925
(Not available on line.) From The Collected Shorter Poems of Kenneth Rexroth, New Directions Publishing, 1966

GIC TO HAR
http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/16341

The Advantages of Learning
http://artrift.blog-city.com/the_advantages_of_learning_kenneth_rexroth.htm

Climbing Milestone Mountain August 22, 1937
http://oldpoetry.com/opoem/108839-Kenneth-Rexroth-Climbing-Milestone-Mountain...

No!
(Not available on line.) From The Collected Shorter Poems of Kenneth Rexroth, New Directions Publishing, 1966

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Webliography
Wikipedia: Kenneth Rexroth
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Rexroth

Modern American Poetry: Kenneth Rexroth
http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/m_r/rexroth/rexroth_life.htm

American Academy of Poets: Kenneth Rexroth


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Notes
(1) (2) and (3) Wikipedia Kenneth Rexroth
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Rexroth

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[andrewnorris2]

He sounds like he was a good person to know, people who spend a lot of their time promoting others tend to be. Another fine inclusion to your series

[PoemsBeingRead]

@andrewnorris2 Yes, Rexroth seems very generous of spirit. Thanks very much for for taking time to listen and comment Andrew.

[Idlinfarm]

An extraordinary beautiful, brilliant human being and poet. I think of him as being a well-educated man who didn't attend college----self-educated to a high degree. These poems make me want more of them. Once long ago (June 1951) my first husband and I spent an evening with him in his apartment in S.F. For that I feel I've had a privileged life.

[PoemsBeingRead]

@Idlinfarm Indeed. That must have been quite a night, Ida. Rexroth must have been fascinating company.

[ViolettaMarmalade]

@Idlinfarm Not only didn't attend college, but didn't even graduate from high school - he was thrown out.