SOURCE: "An Uncomfortable Humanism," in Poetry, Vol. LXV, No. 5, February 1945, pp.260-62.

In this review of The Phoenix and the Tortoise, Golffing finds a rift between Rexroth's intelligence and his sensibility.

Kenneth Rexroth's new volume raises a number of interesting problems with reference to both metrics and the imaginative faculty.

Rexroth's poetic endowment is considerable and it is reinforced by a high degree of humanist culture. Yet the peculiar fusion of intelligence and sensibility, which we call, for convenience, the poetic imagination, is hardly ever completely realized in his work. His sensibility and his intelligence operate on different planes, and their respective qualities are too disparate to associate except in rare moments.

The poet's sensibility is erotic, mystical, while his reasoning tends to be trenchant and all-but-nihilistic. This division results in two contrary modes of expression, at times within the same poem. The purely rational parts are pungent...