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AN
OPEN LETTER TO LOIS SHEARER
ON THE NATURE OF KENNETH REXROTH
Dear
Ms. Shearer:
I
can understand why you might see Kenneth Rexroth's life and death in the
light of why “his readers will
multiply; his works will
endure." After all, you are employed by one of his publishers.
My
guess is that Kenneth would vastly prefer his readers would multiply by fucking rather
than reading his works. He would have added that he hoped they would be
fucking like minks and not like rabbits since Kenneth seemed always one to
believe in quality over quantity even if it meant his book sales and the
magnitude of his literary loyalists would suffer accordingly.
You
obviously came to know Kenneth in a different way than I came to know him.
I married a wonderful woman who had been instrumental in organizing a
protest on behalf of Kenneth when UCSB decided they no longer needed the
services of a poet laureate. Of course, it was the early 1970’s and what
the Academic Vice-Presidents were really up to was to silence Kenneth’s
political voice, not his poetic one. The magnitude of the protest in
behalf of Kenneth proved so overwhelming (intellectually and spiritually)
that the University had to back off. Kenneth, as the supreme gentleman he
could be, returned her favor many fold by writing a poem for our wedding
and allowing us to be a guest in his life on many occasions.
Ms.
Schearer, one of us seems to have missed the essence of Kenneth. Rather
than just a poet, he seemed to me the only kind of Renaissance Man that
could exist in the Twentieth Century: A genius, a disciplined rascal, and
(with a keen set of ethics) a most consummate magician with words (less
politely, an engaging bullshitter).
Kenneth
was so smart that I never knew how much he knew. No matter how outrageous
he was, I could never predict if he was correct or playing with us. He
could have easily been a "foremost translator" of Asian
languages, embellished and captured the essence of the original work, and
still not know more than a few symbols of either Chinese or Japanese. The
interesting thing about it is that only people who didn't know Kenneth
would think it mattered anyway.
In
the visits my wife and I had with Kenneth, poetry was never discussed.
Instead it was journalism and his days as an Examiner columnist, or
backpacking in the Sierras and along the coast (before Highway 1 even
existed), or perhaps his interest in the natural sciences (he grew up
working in his father's pharmacy), or politics (be it Chicago, the
country, or the world).
To
me, what makes Kenneth Rexroth's life and contributions most remarkable is
the breadth of his humanity and intelligence. He was 20% everything
imaginable, 30% journalist, 30% son of the western natural science
tradition and that only left enough room for maybe, just maybe, 20% poet.
Regardless of what he was doing, he was always a scholar (a polite term
this time for an eloquent bullshitter).
By
the way, Ms. Shearer, I don’t think that Kenneth was ever a
"feminist." Calling Kenneth a "feminist" seems to me
to miss his point. He was from birth a true "androgenist." He
certainly was a man who knew how to love women. He appreciated them as
distinct from men but in no way less than men. He never used his powerful
literary position to seduce women, but he also never seemed to pass up the
opportunity to enjoy being seduced‑‑by anyone over anything.
Leaving
his poetry aside completely, Kenneth has to be one of the most remarkable
men that I have ever met. That being said, there is no doubt that Kenneth
would agree with me that time will care for him like it will for all of
us: Entropy will obliterate all our traces. In the mean time, Kenneth
Rexroth was too gentle, too bright and too much an "original"
not to be discovered by the future as long as there are creatures there
that read and feel.
An Examiner Reader
Palo Alto, California
Summer, 1982
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