Kenneth Rexroth
Kenneth Rexroth
Kenneth Charles Marion Rexrothwas an American poet, translator and critical essayist. He is regarded as a central figure in the San Francisco Renaissance, and paved the groundwork for the movement. Although he did not consider himself to be a Beat poet, and disliked the association, he was dubbed the "Father of the Beats" by Time Magazine. He was among the first poets in the United States to explore traditional Japanese poetic forms such as haiku. He was also a prolific...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth22 December 1905
CountryUnited States of America
This isn't the best town for what we're doing. Too many other things to pull the crowds away.
Mary, my little girl, was confirmed in a Buddhist temple. She saw the Life write up on Buddhism, with pictures of the ceremony, and she said she wanted to be confirmed there because she only liked Jesus as a kid. She was a little disappointed in him when he grew up.
Man thrives where angels would die of ecstasy and where pigs would die of disgust.
The modern sensibility attempts to drain the contents of experience; these Greek poets strive to state the fact so poignantly that it becomes an ever-flowing spring as Sappho says, "More real than real, more gold than gold.
With my own group I like to keep it loose. They have to counter rather than go with me. When they stop I like to be moving.
Lost in loneliness and pain. Black and unendurable, Thinking of you with every Corpuscle of my flesh, in Every instant of night And day.
Art is the reasoned derangement of the senses.
When the newspapers have got nothing else to talk about, they cut loose on the young. The young are always news. If they are up to something, that's news. If they aren't, that's news too.
The basic line in any good verse is cadenced... building it around the natural breath structures of speech.
You don't become a saint until you lead a good life whether in Tibet or Italy or America.
A white crowned night sparrow sings as the moon sets. Thunder growls far off. Our campfire is a single light. Amongst a hundred peaks and waterfalls. The manifold voices of falling water Take all night. Wrapped in your down bag Starlight on you cheeks and eyelids Your breath comes and goes In a tiny cloud in the frosty night. Ten thousand birds sing in the sunrise. Ten thousand years revolve without change. All this will never be again.
The holiness of the real Is always there, accessible In total immanence. The nodes Of transcendence coagulate In you, the experiencer, And in the other, the lover.
Love is the garment of knowledge.
Crooked cards and straight whiskey, Slow horses and fast women.