Kenneth Rexroth is a poet of enormous achievement. 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 definitive Rexroth volume.

Now once more gray mottled buckeye branches

Explode their emerald stars,

And alders smolder in a rosy smoke

Of innumerable buds.

I know that spring again is splendid

As ever, the hidden thrush

As sweetly tongued, the sun as vital

But these are the forest trails we walked together,

These paths, ten years together.

We thought the years would last forever,

They are all gone now, the days

We thought would not come for us are here.

Bright trout poised in the current

The raccoon's track at the water's edge

A bittern booming in the distance

Your ashes scattered on this mountain

Moving seaward on this stream

-from AndrA(c)e Rexroth

A poet of rare depth, range and power one of a handful of American poets that deserve to be called great.-Los Angeles Times

Kenneth Rexroth was one of a vanishing race of giants, a literary lion.-Andrei Codrescu

By any measure, Kenneth Rexroth (1905-1982) is one of the world's great literary minds. In addition to being a poet, translator, essayist and teacher, Rexroth also helped found the San Francisco Poetry Center. He was reluctantly branded Grandfather of the Beats and influenced generations of readers with his Classics Revisited series.

Also Available by Kenneth Rexroth

Sacramental Acts: Love Poems

TP $15.00, 1-55659-080-6 CUSA

"[A] massive — and, for the most part, massively satisfying — attempt to restore its author to a central position in American literature. At more than 750 pages, it includes, in sequence, all of Rexroth's individual collections, as well as several long-out-of-print older poems and previously unavailable works." David L. Ulin, The New York Times

"This volume...brings much disparate and previously uncollected material together chronologically....While a tireless promoter of younger poets and neglected contemporaries, Rexroth is largely remembered as the 'father of the Beat generation'...but he was, and remains, a great poet in his own right." Publishers Weekly

"[I]f you love looking things up and taking reading side-trips, Rexroth is one of the most readable and rewarding twentieth-century American poets." Ray Olson, Booklist

"A poet of rare depth, range and power...one of a handful of American poets that deserve to be called great." The Los Angeles Times

Kenneth Rexroth is a poet of enormous achievement. 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. This is the definitive Rexroth volume.

By any measure, Kenneth Rexroth (1905-1982) is one of the world's great literary minds. In addition to being a poet, translator, essayist and teacher, Rexroth also helped found the San Francisco Poetry Center. He was reluctantly branded "Grandfather of the Beats" and influenced generations of readers with his Classics Revisited series.