Frankly H. Miller was defended by me only because he spoke against the War, and I think that was the main reason for his fame. Now I do not believe, what with Palmistry, Chirography, Phrenology, and the Great Cryptogram, he will survive the retooling period. I honestly think he is the most insufferable snob I have ever met but all reformed pandhandlers are like that. in a letter from Kenneth Rexroth to James Laughlin"

"The Complete Poems of Kenneth Rexroth" assembles all of his published longer and shorter poems, and includes a never-before-published selection of his earliest work. Rexroth's poems of nature and protest are remarkable for their erudition and biting social and political commentary; his love poems justly celebrated for their eroticism and depth of feeling.

The cloth edition was one of the most widely reviewed poetry titles in 2003:

"Scholars and critics who endeavor to discuss mid-20th century American poetry responsibly ignore Rexroth at their peril."-"Los Angeles Times Book Review," cover feature and selected as a Book of the Year

"Rexroth is probably best known as the 'Father of the Beat Generation.' These poems reveal that great beauty lies beyond that clichA(c)."-NPR's "All Things Considered"

"Rexroth's prodigious breadth of learning, his hungry attention to the natural world, his contempt for warmongering and his profound, occasionally overlapping love of women are all on flourishing display."-"The San Francisco Chronicle"

"Rexroth never mistook his poetry for a product, and he could present ideas and images in an urgent, memorable and eloquent way."-"The Nation"

"Rexroth is one of the most readable and rewarding 20th-century American poets."-"Booklist"

Kenneth Rexroth (19051982) was one of the world's great literary minds. In addition to being a poet, translator, essayist and teacher, he helped found the San Francisco Poetry Center and influenced generations of readers with his "Classics Revisited" series.

The lyric poetry of Tu Fu ranks with the greatest in all world literature. Across the centuries Tu Fu lived in the T'ang Dynasty (731-770) his poems come through to us with an immediacy that is breathtaking in Kenneth Rexroth's English versions. They are as simple as they are profound, as delicate as they are beautiful. Thirty-five poems by Tu Fu make up the first part of this volume. The translator then moves on to the Sung Dynasty (10th-12th centuries) to give us a number of poets of that period, much of whose work was not previously available in English. Mei Yao Ch'en, Su Tung P'o, Lu Yu, Chu Hsi, Hsu Chao, and the poetesses Li Ch'iang Chao and Chu Shu Chen. There is a general introduction, biographical and explanatory notes on the poets and poems, and a bibliography of other translations of Chinese poetry."

Includes Notes Toward An Understanding Of Kenneth Rexroth With Special Attention To The Homestead Called Damascus.

Additional Authors Include Nicolas Guillen, Pablo Neruda, Arturo Serrano Plaja, Federico Garcia Lorca And Antonio Machado.

Books like Arthur Golden's "Memoirs of a Geisha" have signaled the current fascination with the discreetly private side of Japan during the evocative age of dynasties and imperial rule. "Ariake," a stunning gift book, offers up the passionate words of the elegant and cultured female courtesans of ancient Japan. It was customary in the late 1st and early 2nd century Japanese courts for women to express their hearts' greatest desires and sorrows through poetry. Translated and compiled in "Ariake," these lyrical and poignant verses of seduction, love, and lament are both simple and extraordinary. Illustrated throughout with gorgeous collages that evoke the color, fabric, and textures of the East, "Ariake" brings to life the subtle eloquence of ancient Japan and the universal passions and torments of love. "Ariake" is an exquisite and timeless volume of the heart's longing.

Kabbalah is the "occult" and "secret" tradition in Judaism. One of the most ancient wisdoms, its origins go far back into the distant past.

The Holy Kabbalah is a fascinating introduction to this world of mystery. Arthur Edward Waite was one of the few persons in the modern era to write a sensible and penetrating study of Kabbalah. Contemporary of such occultists as Eliphas Levi, Mme. Blavatsky, and Annie Besant, Waite unraveled the history and traditions of what generations have whispered about as Hebrew witchcraft. The very term Kabbalah was enough to strike fear into the heart of an orthodox believer.

In his introduction Kenneth Rexroth writes: "Kabbalism is the great poem of Judaism, a tree of symbolic jewels showing forth the doctrine of the universe as the vesture of Deity, of the community as the embodiment of Deity, and of love as the acting of God in man. Nobody knew this better than A. E. Waite."

Rexroth, More Classics Revisited. the second volume of Rexroth's Classics essays.

Poet, translator, essayist, and voracious reader--Kenneth Rexroth was an omnivore in the fields of literature. The brief, radiant essays of Classics Revisited discuss sixty key books that are, for Rexroth, "basic documents in the history of the imagination." Ranging from The Epic of Gilgamesh to Huckleberry Finn, these pieces (each about five pages long) originally appeared in the Saturday Review. Distinguished by Rexroth's plain, wide-awake style, Classics Revisited presents complex ideas in simple language, energized by the author's air of talking eye-to-eye with his reader. Elastic, at home in several languages, Rexroth is not bound by East or West; he leaps nimbly from Homer to The Mahabharata, from Lady Murasaki to Stendhal. It is only when we pause for breath that we notice his special affinities: for Casanova, lzaak Walton, Macbeth, Icelandic sagas, classical Japanese poetry. He has read everything. In Sterne, he sees traces of the Buddha; in Fielding, hints of Confucius. "Life may not be optimistic," Rexroth maintains in his introduction, "but it certainly is comic, and the greatest literature presents man wearing the two conventional masks; the grinning and the weeping faces that decorate theatre prosceniums. What is the face behind the mask? Just a human face--yours or mine. That is the irony of it all--the irony that distinguishes great literature--it is all so ordinary."

Kenneth Rexroth's One Hundred More Poems from the Japanese (1955) proved such an extremely popular book that he put together a sequel. The poems are representative of a large range of classical, medieval, and modern poetry, but the emphasis, as in him companion Chinese collections (1955 and 1970), is on folk songs and love lyrics.