Kenneth Rexroth

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Sacramental Acts: The Love Poems of Kenneth Rexroth

Kenneth Rexroth

Synopsis:
Poet, essayist, translator, Kenneth Rexroth was arguably the most influential poet west of the Mississippi. From his encouragement of the poets of the San Francisco Renaissance and the Beat Generation, to his own translations of Japanese and Chinese poetry, he almost single-handedly redefined the way in which American poetry was written, taught, and read. Most importantly, he was one of the finest poets of the twentieth century and nowhere is this more evident than in his love poems. In their introduction to Sacamental Acts, Sam Hamill and Elaine Laura Kleiner write, "By turns revolutionary and conservative, simultaneously spiritual and worldly, Asian and Western, Kenneth Rexroth created what must surely be regarded as the most original synthesis of transcendent metaphysical and erotic verse ever written by an American poet. A polyglot iconoclast, Rexroth was steeped in the world's spiritual and literary traditions.... Whether writing of idealized love, love lost, a father's love, or of the deepest spiritual engagement, he achieved again and again in his poetry what he most longed for but could not find in his life, a passionate but utterly calm self-transcendent state of infinite connectedness ... transformed into something larger than either of the lovers themselves. He achieved something almost impossibly simple -- a glimpse of grace within our temporal flesh in a fragile world".

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Other editions: Softcover - 2009, Softcover - 2009, Softcover - 2008, Softcover - 2007, Softcover - 2004, Softcover - 2003, Hardcover - 2002, Softcover - 2001, Softcover - 2000, Softcover - 1994