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
Kenneth Rexroth quotes about
Harvey , Galileo , Copernicus do not seem occult to us, but they did so to their contemporaries, hierophants of the mysteries of Natural Law, revealers of the secrets of a New Order of the Ages. After all, the movement eventually came to be called the Age of Enlightenment.
As Aristotle said, you have to be an aristocrat or a reactionary to write a good proletarian poem.
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.
The mature man lives quietly, does good privately, takes responsibility for his actions, treats others with friendliness and courtesy, finds mischief boring and avoids it. Without the hidden conspiracy of goodwill, society would not endure an hour.
Crooked cards and straight whiskey, Slow horses and fast women.
Love is the garment of knowledge.
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.
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.
You don't become a saint until you lead a good life whether in Tibet or Italy or America.
I've been around jazz and jazz musicians most of my life.
The basic line in any good verse is cadenced... building it around the natural breath structures of speech.
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.
Lost in loneliness and pain. Black and unendurable, Thinking of you with every Corpuscle of my flesh, in Every instant of night And day.
You learn nothing if you carry with you a journalistic system of values, which is invented to save reporters from experience.