Kenneth Rexroth Critical Essay | Critical Review by William FitzGerald

Critical Review by William FitzGerald

SOURCE: "Twenty Years At Hard Labor," in Poetry, Vol. LVII, No. 1, October 1940, pp. 158-60.

In this review, FitzGerald finds the poems of In What Hour largely derivative and unexciting.

Examples of Kenneth Rexroth's verse are by now familiar to readers of the literary and poetry journals (who may or may not confuse him with the two other Kenneths—Fearing and Patchen); this, however, is his first book. As an integrated performance it is less than notable; in many of the poems, the time-honored sources—Eliot, Pound, Stevens, Crane, Auden—fairly crackle from the page. Rexroth makes little effort to harmonize these loyalties; the result is a book hag-ridden by antecessors, of whom none contradict the critical truism: that their strength lies in their defiance of successful imitation.

Liberal citation from In What Hour might substantiate these remarks, but more significant is the case of Rexroth himself. He is, I believe, an...
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