A caustic but erudite commentator on art and politics for more than half a century, Kenneth Rexroth published nineteen volumes of poetry, a collection of verse plays (produced by the Living Theater during its opening season), thirteen volumes of...

As American as Mark Twain yet more international than Ezra Pound, Kenneth Rexroth, for nearly half a century, was a cultural force as an intrepid artist and poet, an adept editor and translator, an outspoken critic and cultural personality. His...

When Kenneth Rexroth settled in San Francisco in 1927, West Coast writers had already proudly embraced the special experience and beauty of things Western in their decisively American style. In opposition to the dominant cultural values of the East,...

Kenneth Rexroth (1905–1982) (Full name Kenneth Charles Marion Rexroth) American poet, translator, critic, biographer, and novelist. Although he disavowed the title, Rexroth is known as the father of the Beat Generation by writers who contend that...

Kenneth Rexroth (December 221905 – June 61982) was an American poet, translator and critical essayist. He was among the first poets in the United States to explore traditional Japanese poetic forms such as haiku. He is regarded as a chief figure...

I write for one and only one purpose, to overcome the invincible ignorance of the traduced heart. [...] I wish to speak to and for those who have had enough of the Social Lie, the Economics of Mass Murder, the Sexual Hoax, and...

There are two or three books of poetry in English that I reach to with a hesitant hand, as I would to some old jewel box I am hardly worthy of. One of those is Leaves of Grass; another is Creeley's For Love;...

In the following essay, Barber provides analysis of Rexroth's poetry and literary development. According to Barber, "however boldly his personal history carries the impress of beatnik San Francisco and beatific Kyoto, his reckonings with the wilderness bear the telltale marks of Jeffersonian and Emersonian bloodlines."

The poetic theory and practice of Kenneth Rexroth … run counter to the impersonality of much modern literature and criticism…. Rexroth's "progress" as a poet has been a continual revelation of personality, the realization of a selfhood. But he is neither exhibitionistic, like Rimbaud or Lord Byron, nor confessional, like Robert Lowell or Anne Sexton. When he writes about himself, he does so objectively, taking himself for granted. Usually, his attention is fixed on other p...

In the following essay, Gibson examines the evolution of Rexroth's poetic style, literary influences, and conception of personal vision and communal sacrament. According to Gibson, "Rexroth shows that vision is organic consciousness, sympathetic, clear, and steady, communing, communicating, realizing the many in the one, the one in the many, the universality of each being."