The Selected Poems of Kenneth Rexroth - Softcover

Kenneth Rexroth

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0811209172 ISBN 13: 9780811209175

Publisher: New Directions, 1984

Synopsis

The late Kenneth Rexroth (1905-1982) is surely one of the most readable of this century's great American poets. 

He is also one of the most sophisticated. Like William Carlos Williams, he honed his writing to a controlled and direct language. His intellectual complexity matches Wallace Stevens, his polymath erudition Ezra Pound. He is first among our nature poets. His love poems and erotic lyrics are unsurpassed. Rexroth's Selected Poems brings together in a single volume a representative sampling of sixty years' work. Here are substantial passages from his longer poems: The Homestead Called Damascus(1920-1925), begun while the poet was in his teens; the cubist Prolegomenon to a Theodicy (1925-1927); the philosophical masterpiece The Phoenix and the Tortoise (1940-1944) and The Dragon and the Unicorn (1944-1950); and the meditative The Heart's Garden, The Garden's Heart (1967). The shorter poems were originally gathered in In What Hour (1940), The Art of Wordly Wisdom (1949),The Signature of All Things (1950), In Defense of the Earth (1956), Natural Numbers(1964), New Poems (1974), and The Morning Star (1979).

About this title

From the Back Cover

Rexroth's Selected Poems brings together in a single volume a representative sampling of sixty years work. The late Kenneth Rexroth ( 1905-1982) is surely one of the most readable of this century's great American poets. He is also one of the most sophisticated.

About the Author

Poet-essayist Kenneth Rexroth (1905-1982) was a high-school dropout, disillusioned ex-Communist, pacifist, anarchist, rock-climber, critic and translator, mentor, Catholic-Buddhist spiritualist and a prominent figure of San Francisco's Beat scene. He is regarded as a central figure of the San Francisco Renaissance and is among the first American poets to explore traditional Japanese forms such as the haiku.

Edition details

• Publisher: New Directions
• Publication date: 1984
• ISBN 10: 0811209172
• ISBN 13: 9780811209175
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 168
• Editor: Bradford Morrow