Kenneth Rexroth Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Thomas Evans

SOURCE: "Kenneth Rexroth," in American Poetry: The Modernist Ideal, edited by Clive Bloom and Brian Docherty, St. Martin's Press, 1995, pp. 93-104.

In the following essay, Evans examines the significance of Eastern philosophy, particularly the fusion of "Buddhism and anarcho-pacifist attitudes," in Rexroth's contemplative poetry.

Kenneth Rexroth should be remembered, primarily, for his contemplative verse; but this was by no means the extent of his best work. By the end of the Second World War he was already well known on the West Coast as a discerning critic, an essayist who covered an encyclopedic range of subjects, an accomplished painter, and a long-time political activist; and, throughout the later part of his life, for his translations from French, Swedish, Greek, Latin, Spanish, Chinese and Japanese, which drew attention to previously unacknowledged European and Oriental poets.

He was born in Indiana in 1905, and raised by parents who held liberal views....
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