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Kenneth Rexroth - Poet I Academy of American Poets <br />Page I of 3 <br />"MASTERFUL...A revelation:' <br />0 -BROCK CtARKE,aI&MrNb�bsoaisrt Cr»de to lriiters'Honies in New Eegknd <br />Poet <br />Kenneth Rexroth <br />1905-1982, South Bend, IN <br />On December 22, 1905, Kenneth Charles Marion Rexroth was <br />born in South Bend, Indiana. Orphaned at fourteen, Rexroth <br />moved to live with his aunt in Chicago, where he was expelled <br />from high school. He began publishing in magazines at the age of <br />fifteen. As a youth, he supported himself with odd jobs —as a <br />sodajerk, clerk, wrestler, and reporter. He hitchhiked around <br />the country, visited Europe, and backpacked in the wilderness, <br />reading and frequenting literary salons and lecture halls, and <br />teaching himself several languages. <br />Rexroth and his first wife, the painter Andree Shafer, moved to <br />San Francisco in 1927. There he published his first poems in a <br />variety of small magazines, while also pursuing an interest in <br />eastern mysticism and leftist politics. He kept company with <br />like-minded left-wing poets such as Grnrve Omen <br />(/oortcor net/georgedoner) and I nuic 7ukovakv <br />(/noetcnr�poet/In fa-� knfskvl, and with them aimed to rescue <br />poetry from its supposed downslide into formalist <br />sentimentality. They organized clubs to support struggling <br />writers and artists. <br />By the early 1930s, through a correspondence with Ezra Pound <br />(/oor.t.gnrg/poet/e7ra-po ind), Rexroth was introduced to James <br />Laughlin of New Directions press, who included Rexroth's poems <br />of in the second volume of Laughlin's pivotal annual, New <br />Directions in Poetry and Prose in 1937. Rexroth's first collection, <br />/n What Hour, which articulated the poet's ecological <br />sensitivities along with his political convictions, was published by <br />Macmillan in 1940. In 1944 another collection, The Phoenix and <br />the Tortoise, continued his exploration of the natural and the <br />erotic, presented his pacifist stance on World War II, <br />incorporated references to the work of classical poets from the <br />East and the West, and expanded his tonal range with poems <br />touching on world religions and the history of philosophy. A <br />consummate activist, during the war Rexroth aided Japanese - <br />Americans in escaping West Coast internment camps. <br />th <br />tt <br />:LL <br />w <br />NL <br />Ao <br />at <br />s_Q <br />rg <br />1p <br />run <br />tC <br />AB <br />30 <br />M <br />poem index <br />occasions <br />themes <br />forms <br />schools & <br />movements <br />Related Schools & Movements: <br />Beat (/poetsorg/poets? <br />field school movement tid=434) <br />Jazz Poetry (/poetsorg/poets? <br />field school movement tid=447) <br />obiectidats (/poetsorg/poets? <br />field school movement tid=457) <br />San Francisco Renaissance <br />(/poetsorg/poets? <br />field school movement tid=459) <br />https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/kenneth-rexroth <br />10/27/2016 <br />