Kenneth Rexroth
Kenneth Charles Marion Rexroth (December 22, 1905 – June 6, 1982) was an American poet, translator, and critical essayist. He is regarded as a central figure in the San Francisco Renaissance, and paved the groundwork for the movement. Although he did not consider himself to be a Beat poet, and disliked the association, he was dubbed the "Father of the Beats" by "Time" magazine. Largely self-educated, Rexroth learned several languages and translated poems from Chinese, French, Spanish, and Japanese. Early years. Rexroth was born Kenneth Charles Marion Rexroth in South Bend, Indiana, the son of Charles Rexroth, a  pharmaceuticals salesman, and Delia Reed. His childhood was troubled by his father's alcoholism and his mother's chronic illness. His mother died in 1916 and his father in 1919, after which he went to live with his aunt in Chicago and enrolled in the Art Institute of Chicago. At age nineteen, he hitchhiked across the country, taking odd jobs and working a stint as a Forest Service trail crew hand, cook, and packer in the Pacific Northwest, at the Marblemount Ranger Station. Later he was able to board a steamship in Hoboken, exploring Mexico and South America before spending  a week in Paris to meet many notable avant-garde figures, notably Tristan Tzara and the Surrealists. He considered staying on in Paris, but an American friend urged him not to become just another expatriate and he returned home. After meeting his first wife, he moved to San Francisco; he would live in California the rest of his life. Love, marriage, sacrament. Rexroth viewed love for another person as a sacramental act that could connect one with a transcendent, universal awareness. In his introduction to his poem "The Phoenix and the Tortoise," Rexroth articulated his understanding of love and marriage : "The process as I see it goes something like this: from abandon to erotic mysticism, from erotic mysticism to the ethical mysticism of sacramental marriage, thence to the realization of the ethical mysticism of universal responsibility." In 1927, at age 22, Rexroth married Andrée Dutcher, a commercial artist and painter from Chicago. He claimed to have fallen in love with her at first sight when he saw her in the doorway of the apartment building he was renting. He encouraged Dutcher to pursue non-commercial painting, and she gave him feedback on his writing. The two shared many interests and  what Rexroth described as a perfect relationship. Their marriage deteriorated, however, and the couple was divorced near Rexroth's 35th birthday. Andrée died of complications from epilepsy shortly after, in 1940. Her death triggered great sadness in Rexroth, who wrote a number of elegiac poems in her honor. Within a year of Andrée's death, Rexroth married the nurse and poet Marie Kass. They opened up their home to weekly literary discussions, anti-war protesters, and Japanese-American convalescents avoiding internment. The two separated in 1948. In 1949, Rexroth traveled to Europe with Marthe Larsen. The two were married in  Aix-en-Provence despite Rexroth still being legally married to Marie. When the couple returned to the US, Marthe was pregnant. They had had two daughters, Mary and Katherine, by 1955, when Rexroth's divorce from Marie finally came through. In 1956, Marthe fell in love with the poet Robert Creeley, and she later left Rexroth despite his desperate pleas for her to stay. Rexroth later removed all instances of her name from his poetry. After living in San Francisco for 41 years, Rexroth moved to Santa Barbara in 1968. He taught two courses at UCSB. After a few years , he married Carol Tinker, his longtime assistant. They remained married until Rexroth's death in 1982. Poetic influences. In the 1930s, Rexroth was associated with the Objectivists, a largely New York group gathered around Louis Zukofsky and George Oppen. and was included in the 1931 issue of "Poetry" magazine dedicated to Objectivist poetry, and in the 1932 "An “Objectivists” Anthology". Rexroth was the central figure in San Francisco Bay Area poetry from the 1930s through the 1960s and exercised a major and early influence over the evolution of the area's local artistic culture and social counterculture. Bay Area poetry  in the 1940s and 1950s was substantially the creation of Rexroth, along with Robert Duncan, William Everson (Brother Antoninus), Philip Lamantia, Jack Spicer, Bob Kaufman, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and others, and Rexroth's centrality was generally acknowledged. His prose on social subjects was an incitement, a participant, a witness and a history of the emergence of this counterculture. His weekly column for the "San Francisco Chronicle" was, while it survived, a lodestar of this movement. Rexroth was deeply involved in anarchist-libertarian political circles in San Francisco from the early 1930s and as such was deeply opposed to American intervention in  foreign conflicts. He and his wife Mary were intensively active, alongside anarchist and Quaker friends, in working to help California Japanese avoid internment in 1942 and lessen its harm. In the late 1940s he was instrumental in the founding of radio station KPFA-Berkeley, a pioneer in cooperative public radio where he conducted a weekly book-review hour, recorded from his bathtub at home. For the emergent poets of the San Francisco Renaissance and, later, visiting Beat poets, he was the central figure of the local poetic avant garde scene as a node in international artistic culture. His "An Autobiographical  Novel" is a primary witness to this period of importance. It was labeled "autobiographical" to evade legal entanglements. Much of Rexroth's work can be classified as "erotic" or "love poetry", given his deep fascination with transcendent love. According to Hamill and Kleiner, "nowhere is Rexroth's verse more fully realized than in his erotic poetry". His poetry is marked by a sensitivity to Asian cultural forms as well as an appreciation of Ancient Greek lyric poetry, particularly that of Sappho. Rexroth's poetic voice is similar to that of Tu Fu (whom he translated), expressing indignation with the inequities  of the world from an existential perspective. During the 1970s Rexroth, along with the scholar Chung Ling, translated the notable Song Dynasty poet Li Ch'ing-chao and an anthology of Chinese women poets, titled "The Orchid Boat". With "The Love Poems of Marichiko", Rexroth claimed to have translated the poetry of a contemporary, "young Japanese woman poet", but it was later disclosed that he was the author, and he gained critical recognition for having conveyed so authentically the feelings of someone of another gender and culture. Linda Hamalian, his biographer, suggests that, "translating the work of women poets from China  and Japan reveals a transformation of both heart and mind". Rexroth's poetry, essays, and journalism reflect his interests in jazz, politics, culture, and ecology. The Beat Generation. With Rexroth acting as master of ceremonies, Allen Ginsberg, Philip Lamantia, Michael McClure, Gary Snyder, and Philip Whalen performed at the famous Six Gallery reading on October 7, 1955. Rexroth later testified as a defense witness at Ferlinghetti's obscenity trial for publishing "Howl". Rexroth had previously sent Ginsberg (new in the Bay Area) to meet Snyder, and was thus responsible for their friendship. Lawrence Ferlinghetti named Rexroth as one of his  own mentors. Rexroth was eventually critical of the Beat movement. Years after the Six Gallery reading, "Time" referred to him as "Father of the Beats. To this he replied, "an entomologist is not a bug." Rexroth ostensibly appears in Jack Kerouac's novel "The Dharma Bums" as Reinhold Cacoethes. Politics. As a young man in Chicago, Rexroth was involved with the anarchist movement and was active in the IWW, attending and participating in politically charged readings and lectures. He was a regular at meetings of the Washington Park Bug Club, a loose assemblage of intellectuals and revolutionaries. Such relationships allowed  him to recite poems by other writers as well as gain experience with the political climate and revolutionary currents of the day. Lawrence Ferlinghetti recalled that Rexroth self-identified as a philosophical anarchist, regularly associated with other anarchists in North Beach, and sold Italian anarchist newspapers at the City Lights Bookstore. His ideas later coalesced into a concept that he termed the "social lie": that societies are governed by tactics of deception in order to maintain a hierarchy of exploitation and servitude. He saw this as pervasive in all elements of culture, including popular literature, education, and social norms. Rexroth , a pacifist, was a conscientious objector during World War II and worked to help Japanese-Americans forcibly sent to internment camps during the war. Last years. Rexroth died in Santa Barbara on June 6, 1982. He had spent his final years translating Japanese and Chinese women poets, as well as promoting the work of female poets in America and overseas. The year before his death, on Easter, Rexroth converted to Roman Catholicism. He is buried on the grounds of the Santa Barbara Cemetery Association.