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"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.
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"
He is also one of the most sophisticated. Like William Carlos
Williams, he honed his writing to a controlled and direct language.
His intellectual complexity matches Wallace Stevens, his polymath
erudition Ezra Pound. He is first among our nature poets. His love
poems and erotic lyrics are unsurpassed. Rexroth's Selected Poems
brings together in a single volume a representative sampling of
sixty years' work. Here are substantial passages from his longer
poems: The Homestead Called Damascus(1920-1925), begun while the
poet was in his teens; the cubist Prolegomenon to a Theodicy
(1925-1927); the philosophical masterpiece The Phoenix and the
Tortoise (1940-1944) and The Dragon and the Unicorn (1944-1950);
and the meditative The Heart's Garden, The Garden's Heart (1967).
The shorter poems were originally gathered in In What Hour (1940),
The Art of Wordly Wisdom (1949),The Signature of All Things (1950),
In Defense of the Earth (1956), Natural Numbers(1964), New Poems
(1974), and The Morning Star (1979).
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."
The poems are drawn chiefly from the traditional Manyoshu, Kokinshu
and Hyakunin Isshu collections, but there are also examplaes of
haiku and other later forms. The sound of the Japanese texts i
reproduced in Romaji script and the names of the poets in the
calligraphy of Ukai Uchiyama. The translator's introduction gives
us basic background on the history and nature of Japanese poetry,
which is supplemented by notes on the individual poets and an
extensive bibliography.
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.
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."
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