Kenneth Rexroth

 

Six new Kenneth Rexroth essays have been added to the Bureau of Public Secrets website:

GREEK TRAGEDY IN TRANSLATION

http://www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/essays/greek-tragedies.htm 

TRAGEDY AND PHILOSOPHY

http://www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/essays/kaufmann.htm 

WILLIAM BLAKE

http://www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/essays/blake.htm 

HENRY JAMES AND H.G. WELLS

http://www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/essays/james-wells.htm 

SAMUEL BECKETT

http://www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/essays/beckett.htm 

INTRODUCTION TO "BIRD IN THE BUSH: OBVIOUS ESSAYS"

http://www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/essays/essays.htm 

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Other Rexroth essays at the same website:

Disengagement: The Art of the Beat Generation

http://www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/beats.htm 

American Indian Songs

http://www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/indiansongs.htm 

Some Thoughts on Jazz

http://www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/jazz.htm 

Subversive Aspects of Popular Songs

http://www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/songs.htm 

Rimbaud as Capitalist Adventurer

http://www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/essays/rimbaud.htm 

Mark Twain

http://www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/essays/twain.htm 

The Decline of American Humor

http://www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/humor.htm 

The Reality of Henry Miller

http://www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/henrymiller.htm 

The Hasidism of Martin Buber

http://www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/buber.htm 

The Letters of Van Gogh

http://www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/essays/art/van-gogh.htm 

The Tao of Painting

http://www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/essays/tao-painting.htm 

Science and Civilization in China

http://www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/essays/needham.htm 

The World of Genji

http://www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/essays/genji.htm 

Plus "Classics Revisited" essays on Homer, Sappho, Lao Tzu, Cervantes,

Casanova, Stendhal, Marx, Baudelaire, Whitman, etc.

http://www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/cr/index.htm 

 

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The Bureau of Public Secrets website features "The Joy of Revolution" and

other writings by Ken Knabb, Knabb's translations from the Situationist

International (the notorious group that helped trigger the May 1968 revolt

in France), and the Rexroth Archive (texts by and about the great writer and

social critic Kenneth Rexroth).

 

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BUREAU OF PUBLIC SECRETS

P.O. Box 1044, Berkeley CA 94701, USA

http://www.bopsecrets.org 

Kenneth Rexroth was a poet and a co-founder of the San Francisco Poetry Center. Born in 1905 in South Bend, Indiana, he was educated mainly by his parents. As a young man he was a wanderer who sometimes worked as a casual labourer. Later on he became a political radical, and associated with various leftist and avant-garde movements. His work was closely associated with the Beat generation of the 1950s. He was San Francisco correspondent of The Nation from 1953 to 1968, and a columnist of San Francisco Examiner from 1960 to 1968.

Apart from writing poetry, Kenneth Rexroth was also known as a painter. As a literary translator he rendered into English poetry written in French, Spanish, and Greek. He is well known for his translations of classical and modern Chinese and Japanese poetry. He co-translated with Chung Ling works of Chinese women poets, which are published in Orchid Boat: Woman Poets of China and Li Ch'ing-chao: Complete Poems. He died in 1982.

It is a well-known fact that the Anglo-American new poetics of the first half of the 20th century drew upon translations from Asia as an important source of inspiration. Rexroth's interest in Chinese and Japanese poetry is therefore very much part of the modern American poetic tradition.

from http://www.cuhk.edu.hk/rct/30th/bio/cl.html