The Complete Poems of Kenneth Rexroth

Polymath, profound, prolific. This volume brings his body of work into one location. A wonderful gift for anyone who wants to be constantly amazed at his breadth and depth of learning and expression. Really defies easy classification. A treasure.

Lovely edition. Great beat poet. You do need some supplementary books to go with it, at least for his Oriental interpretations.

Great stuff ..... except, his numerous volumes of translated poetry, notably from the Chinese and Japanese, are not included here. It might be said that such translations do not constitute Rexroth poems, but there is room for debate here. No translation can be absolutely literal and, even if it is, the style of the original will be lost. No translation can capture perfectly the nuances of meaning expressed by the original. Any translation, therefore, cannot but be an original work, albeit one that is constrained in various ways by the text in the original language. I would, therefore, expect to see the translated poems in a volume that bills itself as the "Complete Poems" of Kenneth Rexroth.As I write, the capacity to "Look inside" this book is conspicuous by its absence. I wonder why?

Great poet - any friend of Dylan Thomas is a friend of mine.precurser to Ginsberg. Great stuff.

Greatest American poet, period.

One of the great collections of poetry of the 20-century.

I discovered Rexroth's poetry at a young age, and he has been a life-long inspiration. For many years I have had a copy of The Collected Shorter Poems of Kenneth Rexroth, which I dipped into again and again. I had never sought out the longer poems until discovering this Copper Canyon Press book published in 2004.Rexroth (1905-1982) was an anarchist and a pacifist. First exposed to the Left in Chicago during World War I and the Twenties, he was a conscientious objector and worked in a hospital in California during World War II. His poetry encompasses the full spectrum of life -- love, nature, mystical spirituality, literature, and politics. His scathing indictments of war and capitalism are a major part of what makes his writing so compelling.The 750 pages of Rexroth's poetry includes:Earliest and Uncollected PoemsThe Homestead Called Damascus (1920-1925)The Art of Worldly Wisdom (1920-1930)A Prolegomenon to a Theodicy (1925-1927)In What Hour (1940)The Phoenix and the Tortoise (1944)The Signature of All Things (1949)The Dragon and the Unicorn (1952)In Defense of the Earth (1956)Natural Numbers (1964)Godel's Proof (1965)The Heart's Garden, the Garden's Heart (1967)Love Is An Art of Time (1974)The Morning Star (1979)Here is a quote from "For Eli Jacobson" (December 1952), from "In Defense of the Earth":There are few of us now, soonThere will be none. We were comradesTogether, we believed weWould see with our own eyes the newWorld where man was no longerWolf to man, but men and womenWere all brothers and loversTogether. We will not see it.I haven't yet subjected this doorstop-of-a-book to the same amount of abuse as the Shorter Poems on New Directions, but so far it is quite sturdy for a paperback.(verified purchase from the Cosmic Book Emporium)

"The Complete Poems of Kenneth Rexroth" is an audacious achievement by Editor Sam Hamill, Bradford Morrow and Copper Canyon Press. From Sam Hamhill's Introduction we journey backward to 1948 when McCarthy witch hunts were imminent, Atom Bombs were the American threat and Existentialists Andre Breton and Jean-Paul Sarte and Camus questioned their philosophies. Ezra Pound was incarcerated at the Elizabeth's Hospital for the insane. Meanwhile, in San Francisco, 43 year old Kenneth Rexroth's voice was emerging as he penned the "Dragon and the Unicorn" poem and finalized the book "The Signature of All Things." He helped promote poets like FerlinghettiA Coney Island of the Mind: Poems and found the Poetry Center at San Francisco State University, he testified in court and confounded the prosecution of Ginsberg's Howl.Through Rexroth we see a complex lens of world cultures. He translated poems by Neruda, Lorca, Chinese poetry and Japanese classics. Read "Between Two Wars," The Phoenix and the Tortoise," the classic "Thou Shall Not Kill-- a memorial for Dylan Thomas The Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas: The Original Edition."And all the birds of the deep sea rise up/Over the luxury liners and scream/"You Killed him! You killed him!/In your God damned Brookes Brothers suit/You son of a bitch.Sure, Kenneth Rexroth did not care to be labeled "Father of the Beats," but we as readers know otherwise.